How to explain AI to your family over the Christmas turkey

Depending on who you ask, artificial intelligence is either going to save humanity or kill us all. At the same time, AI seems to be in everything from home assistants to washing machines. But what is AI, and why is everyone going on about it? Here's how to explain artificial intelligence to your family over Christmas when they ask whether they've unwittingly inviting the AI apocalypse into their living room. Roughly speaking, artificial intelligence research is all about creating computers that can perform tasks that usually require human intelligence.