Glossary · 1 · Foundations: how AI works
Artificial intelligence (AI)
Also known as: AI
German: Künstliche Intelligenz
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the field of computer science that builds systems able to perform tasks that normally need human judgment — recognizing patterns, understanding and producing language, making predictions or recommendations — by learning from data rather than following only hand-written rules.
- Beginner
- Technical writers
- Technical marketers
- Technical project managers
In one sentence
What artificial intelligence means in practice: systems that learn from data to recognize, predict and generate — the starting point of the AI learning path.
Example
A support portal that suggests the right troubleshooting topic from a customer’s free-text question uses AI; a portal that only matches exact keywords does not.
Explained in context
Context cards connect this term with others to answer one question. Also in British English and German.
Why it matters on your learning path
- Technical writers: AI changes how documentation is found, read and produced. Knowing what AI can and cannot do is the base of every later station.
- Technical marketers: “AI-powered” is a claim. Being able to say which AI technique a product uses keeps messaging accurate and credible.
- Technical project managers: AI features bring new kinds of work into a project: data preparation, evaluation, review and governance.
AI vs. machine learning vs. generative AI
AI is the umbrella. Machine learning is the dominant way to build AI today. Generative AI is the branch of machine learning that produces new content, such as text from a large language model. Regulators use their own, narrower definitions — see AI system (AI Act).