Seems like everyone is talking about artificial intelligence nowadays. Either hailed as the golden solution to every problem or feared for its potential to take jobs or even cause our undoing. But perhaps it would be a good idea to take a step back and ask; What is artificial intelligence? Who better to answer that question than the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense.

A.I. is a complex field and is defined very broadly with a bunch of different types of technologies that today fall under the umbrella term “AI”. In the below, John Launchbury, the Director of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I2O), attempts to demystify AI–what it can do, what it can’t do, and where it is headed.