If you are looking for an answer to the question What is Artificial Intelligence? and you only have a minute, then here's the definition the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence offers on its home page: "the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines."
However, if you are fortunate enough to have more than a minute, then please get ready to embark upon an exciting journey exploring AI (but beware, it could last a lifetime) …
"A five-year interdisciplinary effort by speech scientists and computer scientists has demonstrated the feasibility of programming a computer system to “understand” connected speech, i.e., translate it into operational form and respond accordingly. An operational system (HARPY) accepts speech from five speakers, interprets a 1000-word vocabulary, and attains 91 percent sentence accuracy. This Steering Committee summary report describes the project history, problem, goals, and results." Amsterdam: North- Holland.