What is Artificial Intelligence?
Machines that mimic human intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the ability of computer systems to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. It involves creating computer programs or machines that can think, learn, and make decisions like humans.
AI enables computers to process and analyze large amounts of data, recognize patterns, and extract meaningful insights from it. It involves various techniques such as machine learning, where computers learn from data and improve their performance over time without being explicitly programmed. AI also encompasses other approaches like natural language processing, computer vision, and robotics.
The goal of AI is to mimic human intelligence in solving complex problems, making predictions, and automating tasks. It can be found in a wide range of applications, including voice assistants, recommendation systems, autonomous vehicles, medical diagnosis, and many more.
In simple terms, AI is about creating smart computer systems that can learn, understand, and make decisions like humans, ultimately helping us solve problems and make our lives easier.
“AI is the science of making machines smart.”
— Demis Hassibis, Co-Founder and CEO of Google DeepMind.
Basically, artificial intelligence is the umbrella term for the algorithms, technologies, and techniques that make machines smarter, and give them superhuman capabilities.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a key driver of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Algorithms are already being applied to improve predictions, optimize systems and drive productivity in many other sectors.
One aspect of AI is Machine Learning where programs are provided with sets of training data and parameters to learn patterns and serve up the best response. That could be as simple as Google Images knowing what is a Dog vs a Cat or as advanced as a program that can identity Breast Cancer cells 400% more accurately than humans.
The difference between AI and other computer software or big data applications is that ‘big data’ programs can present ‘Here are all the images tagged Dog’. Where as Artificial Intelligent systems provide ‘Here are all the images with Dogs in them’.
The surge in AI adoption has been met with excitement, amazement and for some, fear. Some influential voices have worried about AI’s potential to be misused or abused, to introduce intended or unintended bias into decision making, to violate personal privacy, or to eliminate jobs.
The rise of artificial intelligence is directly related to the phenomenon of data. Within this growing body of digital data lies the potential to defeat cancer, reverse climate change, manage the complexities of the global economy, and improve access to critical services for under-served populations.
Artificial intelligence is a set of technology that will underpin everything we do in the future. Computer vision, robotics, automation, conversational AI, natural language processing utilising machine learning will reshape humanity.
There are six common types of Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Is the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data.
Computer vision
Computer vision deals with how computers can be made for gaining high-level understanding from digital images or videos. Alongside machine learning this AI can make predictions or decisions. Think Autonomous Vehicles.
Conversational AI
In the short term, this type of AI is epitomised by chatbots. A chatbot is a computer program which conducts a conversation via voice or text interactions.
Robotics
Robots are often used to perform tasks that are difficult for humans to perform or perform consistently.
Automation
Robotic process automation (RPA) is the use of software with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities to handle high-volume, repeatable tasks that previously required a human to perform.
Natural Language Processing
One of the older and best known examples of NLP is spam detection, which looks at the subject line and the text of an email and decides if it's junk. Current approaches to NLP are based on machine learning. NLP tasks include text translation, sentiment analysis and speech recognition.
A little history
Research into thinking machines became popular in the late 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s. Artificial Intelligence has been around for decades.
In 1950 Alan Turing - the god father of AI - published a landmark paper in which he speculated about the possibility of creating machines that think.
And devised the Turing test.
If a machine could carry on a conversation (over a teleprinter) that was indistinguishable from a conversation with a human being, then it was reasonable to say that the machine was “thinking".
The 1956 Dartmouth conference was the moment that AI gained its name, its mission, first success and its major players, and is widely considered the birthplace of AI.
The proposal for the conference said "every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it”.
Those who attended the Dartmouth event would become the leaders of AI research for decades. Many of them predicted that a machine as intelligent as a human being would exist in no more than a generation and they were given millions of dollars to make this vision come true.
But it became obvious they had underestimated how hard it would be; due to computer hardware limitations; and after pressure, the USA and British GOVT stopped funding, and the following years would be known as the first AI Winter.
Investment and interest in AI boomed in the first decades of the 21st century when machine learning was successfully applied to many problems in academia and industry due to the presence of powerful computer hardware.
As in previous "AI summers", some observers (such as Ray Kurzweil predicted the imminent arrival of artificial general intelligence: a machine with intellectual capabilities that exceed the abilities of human beings.
Today none of us can go through a normal day without utilising some form of AI. From search to social, Netflix, cctv and banking. AI is everywhere.
Artificial Intelligence is not in the future, it’s technology of today. The robots are here. AI Systems are already running our lives, impacting people, society and every industry.
What AI Systems do and become is up to us, we’re all AI Designers.