Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been increasingly present in the contemporary world, with applicability in various fields of knowledge. AI-based solutions, implemented with different techniques, are present in different systems. The purpose of this article is to (1) present a brief history and the main concepts related to Artificial Intelligence - with a focus on machine learning (ML) techniques -, (2) discuss its nuances, techniques and (3) present some application examples in several areas. The intention is to approach the subject in an accessible way to the non-specialized public, in order to promote the understanding of its main concepts, but without the need to resort to very technical details. For this, a narrative review of the literature on AI is carried out, briefly addressing its history, concepts, intersections with other areas and applications. The machine learning segment receives special attention, with emphasis on supervised learning and its application in classification problems. The article also highlights the capabilities presented by the most modern machine learning techniques which, in some cases, present better results than those obtained by humans. Given these promising results, the future of AI points to the creation of systems with capabilities that will increasingly resemble those of the human intellect. However, the creation of truly thinking machines, and not of thinking simulators, should still remain for a long time as an objective to be achieved.