Understanding AI

As a woman in her early 50s who has worked in more social science than computer science, I have to admit that I'm not entirely certain that I know what AI is. It seems like a huge fuzzy mass of something that is too complicated to even figure out the edges of. I have to admit that I hate not understanding the basics something important and, at least at this point in my life, I still refuse to let my age be an excuse for not knowing new things.
I'm thinking that I'm not the only one feeling this way so I thought I'd set up the opportunity for us to look at it together and use our collective brain power to figure some of it out. And we can talk about what we think are the good and bad things about it, once we all know a bit more about it.
I've come across the work of Princeton professor of computer science Arvind Narayanan, who wrote the book AI Snake Oil. It seems like a good resource to focus our discussion around. You don't have to read it - we'll sum up some of the arguments during out discussion. If you do want to read it, I have a copy of the ebook and the audiobook - message me if you want links to them. There's also lots of presentations and lectures on YouTube - I found this one quite good: https://youtu.be/zqRuisPCwFI?si=ZmSaDxOBU5iun7iU

Please post any resources you think will be helpful to discussion in the comment section below.