An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence has entered a new stage. It is moving beyond answering questions and generating content toward using tools, pursuing goals and taking action.

What does that change mean for ordinary people?

In this updated second edition of An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, David Glacier provides a clear and accessible guide to the technology reshaping work, education, medicine, science and everyday life. No technical background is required.

The book begins with the fundamentals: what artificial intelligence is, how machines learn from data and how language models generate their remarkably human-sounding responses. It explains why AI can reason usefully in one moment and produce a confident falsehood in the next.

The discussion then moves to one of the most important developments in modern AI: agency. An AI that recommends a course of action is different from one that can use software, access private information, spend money or control machinery. Intelligence determines what a system can work out. Agency determines what it can do.

This second edition expands the discussion to include:

• Generative and multimodal AI
• Hallucinations, bias and persuasive language
• AI agents, tools, memory and delegated authority
• Cybersecurity and the risks of long-running autonomous tasks
• The debate over slowing frontier AI development
• AI’s growing role in employment, education, creativity and medicine
• Privacy, governance and meaningful human oversight
• The choices that should remain in human hands

Balanced and practical, the book avoids both exaggerated fear and unquestioning enthusiasm. It shows where AI can provide enormous value, where caution is necessary and which questions people should ask before trusting a system with important decisions.

AI creates possibilities. Agency turns those possibilities into action. Wisdom must still determine which actions should be taken—and under whose authority.