217: The Nature of Artificial Intelligence

What is artificial intelligence? We started this conversation a week ago talking about AI and some of the dangerous aspects of this technology, but do we really understand what it is? We used to say, a generation ago, what is this thing called electronic mail? Now, email is commonplace the world over. Then we said, what is the internet? What is Google? What is a search engine? And today we say, what is AI? Well, it’s simply the next generation of the discovery of data and one of these days, it will be as commonplace and normal to us all of those other things. So, what is artificial intelligence?Lynn Vincent, “Crouching at the keyboard,” January 1, 2026.Maria Baer, “AI is not your mom,” September 23, 2025.Samuel D. James, “AI and the crisis of truth,” September 5, 2025.