What is Artificial intelligence (AI)?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a broad field of computer science dedicated to building systems that can perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making.
Artificial intelligence (AI) encompasses systems and machines designed to mimic cognitive functions, learning from patterns in data to execute complex tasks autonomously. The core goal of AI is to create intelligent agents that can take actions in the real or virtual world to achieve specific goals, often improving their performance over time through experience. While the field includes highly specialized subsets like Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL), in a practical business context, AI refers to the various tools and applications that automate repetitive or intellectually complex processes, from analyzing market trends to generating creative content.
Think of it this way: AI is like having a new, incredibly bright employee who can learn anything very quickly, but only if you give them the right data and a clear set of rules. It’s not magic; it’s just software that’s designed to recognize patterns and act on them. It’s the engine under the hood of everything from your GPS figuring out the fastest route home to a large language model writing a draft email for you. It’s about giving machines the ability to “think” like us to handle the work we’d rather not do.
Why Artificial Intelligence Matters for Your Organization
For a community organization leader, understanding Artificial intelligence (AI) matters because it represents the most significant shift in productivity and strategy since the introduction of the internet. It is not a futuristic concept; it is a present-day tool that, when adopted responsibly, can dramatically amplify the impact of a small team.
AI allows organizations to stop spending precious staff time on tasks that are repetitive, complex, or time-consuming—like drafting newsletters, sorting grant applications, or summarizing meeting minutes. By automating these functions, AI frees up your team to focus on high-value, human-centric work, such as building relationships with members, planning major events, and driving economic development initiatives. Embracing AI is about giving your organization the capacity of a much larger team without the corresponding increase in budget.
Example
Let’s look at how AI can transform a common task for an economic development officer: creating a detailed summary of local business sentiment after a major survey.
Weak Approach (Without AI): Your team spends an entire week manually reading through hundreds of open-ended survey responses, painstakingly categorizing them by theme (e.g., “labour shortages,” “supply chain,” “optimism”), and then manually calculating sentiment scores to write a 10-page report. This is slow, prone to human bias, and diverts resources from the next strategic planning session.
Strong Approach (With AI): You input the survey data into an AI tool (like a custom language model or data analysis platform). The AI instantly categorizes the feedback, identifies the top 5 emerging themes, generates a sentiment analysis score (positive/negative/neutral), and drafts a concise executive summary ready for review. The human officer only spends a few hours reviewing and refining the AI’s output, allowing them to shift immediately to acting on the insights.
Key Takeaways
- Mimics Human Thought: AI is software engineered to perform tasks that require human intelligence (learning, reasoning, creation).
- Focus is on Utility: In business, AI is a tool for automation and augmentation, not a sci-fi concept.
- Powered by Data: AI learns and improves by processing vast amounts of data to recognize patterns and make predictions.
- The Productivity Multiplier: AI allows small teams to achieve the output and analytical depth of much larger organizations.
Go Deeper
- Learn More: Understand the core of modern AI by diving into Large Language Models (LLMs), which are responsible for generating most text and content today.
- Get Practical: See how the instruction you give to AI directly determines its usefulness in our guide on writing a good Prompt.
- Lead by Example: Explore the mandatory internal frameworks needed to use this technology safely in our definition of an AI Policy.