What is this AI anyway?

AI is all the rage right now. It's everywhere, you can't avoid it. But what is AI? I'm not going to try and answer that here. What I will do, though, is state the question somewhat differently: What is meant by "AI" in a given context? And this matters, because the words we use are important. The reality is that when you see AI mentioned it really could be almost anything. Some things AI might…