Originally a field of study to allow machines to independently make human-like decisions. Recently a fast-moving hype topic.
Compared and contrasted
to Machine Learning: A subfield of AI researching how to improve performance on a task automatically with new inputs, without human intervention.
to Data Science: In comparison to AI, the goal of data science is to generate new human knowledge from data. Methods used are more human-driven, statistics and math with AI playing an increasing role.