What, specifically, defines artificial intelligence? Is AI simply a fancy name for the robots you see in movies like Terminator and Wall-E? What makes a machine artificially intelligent, as opposed to just being useful? There is debate that something must be self-learning or autonomous to be considered AI. Ian Bogost dove deeply into the debate in a recent article for The Atlantic, "'Artificial intelligence' has become meaningless." Bogost cuts to the chase when it comes to what qualifies as AI: "Machines warrant the name AI when they become sentient--or at least self-aware enough to act with expertise, not to mention volition and surprise.

To borrow a cliché opening from the last high school commencement or Maid of Honor speech you heard, the dictionary defines artificial I\intelligence (AI) as 1: a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers; and 2: the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior. But, do these definitions really explain the difference between an artificially intelligent system and one that's just programmed to be useful? What is "intelligent" behavior or, more specifically, "intelligent human behavior"? The definition is clearly open to some level of interpretation. Combine that ambiguity with the term's cool sci-fi connotations, and you get a world in which, as The Atlantic's Ian Bogost puts it, "deflationary examples of AI are everywhere."