The branch of computer science that builds machines and software able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, recognising patterns, and understanding language.
- Machine learning is a subset of AI in which systems learn patterns from data rather than following only fixed rules; deep learning uses multi-layered neural networks.
- Generative AI (large language models, image generators) produces text, images, or code; these became widely used from the early 2020s.
- Applications: facial recognition, language translation, medical diagnosis, autonomous vehicles, fraud detection, and surveillance.
- Concerns include job displacement, algorithmic bias, deepfakes and misinformation, data privacy, and accountability for automated decisions.
- Security relevance: AI aids border surveillance, predictive policing, and cyber-defence, but also enables new threats such as deepfakes and automated attacks; verify the latest on India's national AI policy and regulation.
AI is a fast-rising science, technology, and current-affairs theme, with direct security applications (surveillance, cyber) and human-rights concerns (privacy, bias) that fit the CAPF lens.
AI is the broad field; machine learning is a subset, and deep learning a further subset. Generative AI creates new content, while traditional AI may only classify or predict.
Machines performing human-like tasks (learning, reasoning, language); machine learning and deep learning are its core methods, with surveillance and deepfake implications.