artificial intelligence
Pluralartificial intelligences (some meanings)
- 1Intelligence displayed by an entity that humans have made, rather than by one that arises in nature.
The chess engine displayed a level of artificial intelligence that unsettled even seasoned grandmasters.
Even a thermostat that learns its owners' schedule exhibits a modest form of artificial intelligence.
Note
The phrase at its most literal: each word keeps its everyday meaning, and no threshold is set for how much intelligence counts. That is what separates it from the human-level meaning, which asks a machine to think on a person's level. Here a chess engine and a learning thermostat both qualify. In this sense it takes no plural, because artificial intelligences are the systems themselves.
- 2The branch of computer science that seeks to reproduce or imitate human-level intelligence, self-awareness, knowledge, conscience, and thought in computer programs.
She left her physics program to do graduate research in artificial intelligence.
The university is hiring three professors of artificial intelligence this year.
Note
The name is John McCarthy's, coined in 1955 and spread by the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence the next year. As the name of a field it takes no article (research in artificial intelligence), and older writing often capitalizes it: Marvin Minsky's The Society of Mind dates the modern science of Artificial Intelligence to the 1950s.
- 3A computer system or software package that is artificially intelligent, able to act in ways that show intelligence.
The bank uses an artificial intelligence to flag unusual payments within seconds.
Several competing artificial intelligences were tested on the same set of medical scans.
Note
When it is counted, the phrase means one system among others: an artificial intelligence that flags fraud, two competing artificial intelligences. Without an article it slides back toward the technology in general, as when Pope Leo told journalists in 2025 to use artificial intelligence with "responsibility and discernment".
- 4Generative artificial intelligence in particular, the kind of system that produces new content such as images or text.
The band apologized after fans noticed the album cover had been made with artificial intelligence.
Teachers worry that students will hand in essays written by artificial intelligence.
Note
Many careful writers object to this narrowing, because the field reaches far beyond tools that turn out images and text; where the difference matters, generative artificial intelligence says exactly what is meant. The narrow sense now starts arguments about labels: Dave Jorgenson's Did Will Smith really generate a crowd with AI? (2025) turns on whether image enhancement counts.
- 5A computer or computer program that is intelligent and aware of itself, chiefly in science fiction.
In the novel, a rogue artificial intelligence seizes control of the planet's defense network.
The crew begin to suspect that the station's artificial intelligence has been lying to them.
Note
Science fiction turned the quality into a character: a rogue artificial intelligence, the station's AI, Skynet. As a being it takes an article and a plural, and stories treat it as a someone who can scheme, lie or stand accused. Compare machine thinking itself, which a computer has rather than is.
- 6A character or other entity in a video game that the game controls instead of a player.
If too few people join the match, the artificial intelligence takes over the empty slots.
On the hardest setting, the artificial intelligence flanks you and hides behind cover.
Note
Game reviewers rate it the way they rate graphics: a 2013 review in The Metro faulted the first Sniper: Ghost Warrior for half broken graphics and artificial intelligence. The phrase covers both the computer-run characters and the programming behind them, so the AI can mean an enemy soldier or how cleverly the enemies behave.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with artificial intelligence, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.
Origin
Coined by the American computer scientist and cognitive scientist John McCarthy in 1955, and made popular by the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence in 1956.