Artificial intelligence news covers the technology and companies behind it, as well as the ethics issues it raises. The stories here also look at the way AI is changing our lives, from detecting cancers to powering robot surgeons.

The history of AI stretches back to the late 1950s, when Frank Rosenblatt developed the Perceptron, the first computer that learned through trial and error. The following decades saw significant advances in automation, including the use of neural networks in AI software and hardware. By the 2010s, an abundance of data, advancements in learning algorithms and increases in computing power led to major breakthroughs in speech recognition, machine translation, visual recognition and reinforcement learning.

One of the most interesting developments in recent years has been generative AI (gen AI). This is an artificial intelligence that can create original text, images and video. Gen AI tools are often built on top of other technologies such as deep learning, which is a subset of machine learning that applies data-driven algorithms to make predictions and decisions.

For example, a generative AI tool like ChatGPT uses large language models (LLMs) to generate responses to user prompts. The LLMs are trained on huge volumes of text data, such as terabytes, to find patterns that are most likely to solve a query. Netflix, Google Translate and Tesla’s autopilot system all use generative AI.

Another use of generative AI is the ability to create personalized recommendations for users based on their viewing history. It’s also used in telehealth to identify signs of illness in patients, and in medical imaging to detect changes that doctors might miss.