Note: Marc Andreessen is a cofounder and general partner at the globally recognized venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (link) and founder in highly successful software companies.

From Marc’s website:  The era of Artificial Intelligence is here, and boy are people freaking out.  Fortunately, I am here to bring the good news: AI will not destroy the world, and in fact may save it.

First, a short description of what AI is: The application of mathematics and software code to teach computers how to understand, synthesize, and generate knowledge in ways similar to how people do it. AI is a computer program like any other – it runs, takes input, processes, and generates output. AI’s output is useful across a wide range of fields, ranging from coding to medicine to law to the creative arts. It is owned by people and controlled by people, like any other technology.

A shorter description of what AI isn’t: Killer software and robots that will spring to life and decide to murder the human race or otherwise ruin everything, like you see in the movies.  An even shorter description of what AI could be: A way to make everything we care about better.