Artificial intelligence is one of the most significant breakthroughs of the 21st century. Experts from different industries study its capabilities and discover new ways of its application. We call AI an emerging technology, however, scientists have been working in this direction since the 1950s. At first, AI was far from smart robots we see in sci-fi movies. Nevertheless, thanks to such technologies as machine learning and deep learning, AI became one of the most promising areas of the IT industry. The demand for AI developers constantly grows, and some experts imagine a future where computers replace humans. Even though it’s too early to speak of artificial intelligence as of a threat to the workforce, modern workers will definitely benefit from learning more about this technology because it will allow them to prepare for the future changes in their industries and to get familiar with a new, effective and interesting tool. In our experience as technologists, consultants, and public speakers, we are constantly meeting people with different opinions about the definitions of AI, data science, and ML although many are quite opinionated, few can defend their position. Indeed, finding a universal definition of AI is not as trivial as it might look. Going by its name, we might try to define artificial intelligence by finding the human traits that we associate with intelligence. The main goal of this guide is to provide intuition about theory, techniques and applications for people who want to learn AI. It consists of brief descriptions and links to explanatory articles and lectures. Each section contains basic materials to get the idea how it works. In the last section you can find additional books, courses, podcasts and other materials.
