What is behind the term “artificial intelligence”?

Dan Perri, MD, is an associate professor of medicine in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University with clinical and research activities in the Divisions of General Internal Medicine, Critical Care Medicine, and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology. He is also Chief Medical Information Officer at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, where he seeks to optimize safe and appropriate patient care through the innovative use of digital technologies.

When different people use the term “artificial intelligence,” do they have the same thing in mind?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a bit of a catch term, so people may think of the same thing when they think of AI. Put simply, AI is a task that a computer can do that historically would have required human intelligence. This can be anything from a simple game of chess to driving an automated car.

There’s a bunch of different terms that people use that are all within the umbrella of AI: neural networks, which is brain-based pathways of how machines “think”; there’s deep learning with multiple layers of neural pathways; there’s cognitive computing trying to mimic how the brain works; there’s visual AI using video and photos; and natural language processing, in which case we can use words to interact with computers. Any and all of those are part of AI.