What is Artificial Intelligence?

November 10, 2025

Greetings from ex machina,

One of the most common topics of conversation in recent months (other than the recent interest in air traffic control) has been artificial intelligence.  It is a nearly pervasive presence, and for the most part none of us understands it.  Sort of like pickleball. 

So, what is artificial intelligence?  I think many people, with perhaps the exception of those waiting for a plane, would be interested in knowing the answer. So, I thought, in the interest of the common good, what follows is a comprehensive explanation of artificial intelligence.

First, I’ll begin with what it is not.

Artificial intelligence is not thinking you know something you don’t actually know.  Like when you tell your wife you know how to make rice, but what you really know is how to make drywall paste.  Or when you pronounce ‘hyperbole’ the way it looks, and you say it with such hubris that other people immediately look it up to see if they’ve been saying it wrong all their life.

Artificial intelligence is also not the phrase you use to refer to other people who are feigning a degree of intelligence that they do not possess. Here you might be picturing politicians, or perhaps the person driving behind you on the highway so close you can smell the garlic on their breath.  Or maybe a neighbor who has overestimated your interest in his musical taste, or the waiter who does not write down your order.  These are just examples, not from any specific experience.

There are other examples of what artificial intelligence isn’t, (lucky guesses in trivia contests) but it is a complex subject so let’s move on to what it actually is. Probably.

First, fonts. One of the reasons artificial intelligence can be confusing is because of fonts. Most people abbreviate the phrase, for brevity, but also to sound smart. But, in some fonts AI looks like Al, which makes people think you are talking about your brother-in-law, Albert, who some people call ‘Bert’, because ‘Al’ was his dad’s name, which makes it worse.  For clarity, some people use punctuation, for example A.I., which also is very similar to A.1. a trademarked brand of steak sauce.  (Here is where Ai would advise you to stop reading, unless you already have.)

There are a few other phrases that are important in your education about Ai. For example:

Machine learning: this is not understanding the grinding sound your car makes when it’s trying to remind you to change the oil. 

Algorithms: this is not the dancing class your brother-in-law took at the community college.

Large language models: This is not the LOVE sculpture in Philadelphia.

Natural language processing: this is not how computers learn to speak jive.

Convolutional Neural Network: this is not a news channel that features only stories that digress into other stories but you never get to actually hear the point, but honestly if it were I would definitely watch it.

So, Ai, (which is how Clippy told me to write it out) is a technology that enables computers to simulate human learning, comprehension, creativity, and problem solving.  Most of the content provided to Ai technology is scraped from the internet, which has been deemed as 100% reliable, but I should mention that it also includes the words in this essay.  The rest comes from old Highlights magazines and reruns of ‘Petticoat Junction’.

And there you are, as promised, a comprehensive explanation of artificial intelligence.  I will confess here I did zero research, including looking up the definition of ‘comprehensive’.

If there was a point to this essay, it would be to demonstrate what authentic intelligence was.  Of course, because it was written by a human being, it has failed in the obvious way and succeeded in a more subtle way.  It’s also possible that there was no point to these words, and they were simply designed to distract you from the fact your flight was just cancelled.

Hope this finds you knowing the difference,

David

Copyright © 2025 David Smith