By any measure, artificial intelligence (AI) has become big business.
According to Gartner, customers worldwide will spend $62.5 billion on AI software in 2022. And it notes that 48 percent of CIOs have either already deployed some sort of AI software or plan to do so within the next twelve months.
All that spending has attracted a huge crop of startups focused on AI-based products. CB Insights reported that AI funding hit $15.1 billion in the first quarter of 2022 alone. And that came right after a quarter that saw investors pour $17.1 billion into AI startups. Given that data drives AI, it’s no surprise that related fields like data analytics, machine learning and business intelligence are all seeing rapid growth.
But what exactly is artificial intelligence? And why has it become such an important — and lucrative — part of the technology industry?
What Is Artificial Intelligence?
In some ways, artificial intelligence is the opposite of natural intelligence. If living creatures can be said to be born with natural intelligence, man-made machines can be said to possess artificial intelligence. So from a certain point of view, any “thinking machine” has artificial intelligence.And in fact, one of the early pioneers of AI, John McCarthy, defined artificial intelligence as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.”
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