Continuous integration (CI) aims to improve software quality and reduce delivery time by implementing continuous quality control processes like running automated unit, integration, and acceptance tests. CI helps teams be more efficient by quickly identifying issues and getting feedback. Key principles of CI include having a single code repository, automating builds and testing, publishing the latest build daily, and getting builds into production to enable fast feedback. Automating builds is important to ensure consistency across environments and allow issues to be identified and addressed early during development rather than in production.