What is Artificial Intelligence? The Ultimate Guide For Beginners

What is Artificial Intelligence? The Ultimate Guide For Beginners.

Introduction:

AI is now a reality in the society and is changing the way we live in the society. AI is practically everywhere today from the use of virtual personal assistants such as Siri and Alexa to the use of self-driven cars among other applications. But what do we mean by AI and why is it gaining such importance in today’s world that is so much driven by technology?

In its most basic definition, Artificial Intelligence means the imitability of human intelligence by machines. It can help systems to acquire knowledge from experience, adapt to new incoming data and complete tasks that are associated with human thinking such as identification of objects and speech recognition, decision making and translation. Let’s start this beginner’s guide by first understanding what AI is, learning about its history and finally, understanding how it is used in the real world.

 1. What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the science that makes an attempt to mimic the human intelligence in machines and its systems. These tasks include decision making tasks which may be simple or complicated; problem solving tasks that are also simple or complex.

 Example: When you talk to your smartphone’s voice assistant or Alexa, you are actually communicating with artificial intelligence. The system implements an understanding of your voice and interprets your commands, giving you real like responses.

 There are three main types of AI:

Narrow AI (Weak AI): 

Intended or constructed for a certain operation or a number of operations.

Example: Netflix employ the use of Artificial Intelligence to suggest movies or shows to watch depending on your previous history of movies watched.

General AI:

An AI which is capable of reasoning and is capable of solving any problem that a human being can solve. It is theory as of now.

Example: At the moment there is no real-world example of general AI, but the idea is to develop systems that are capable of thinking and learning like human beings in any field.

Superintelligence:

This refers to AI that is better than human’s intelligence. It is still in the realm of the imagination, and is still has been the cause of many ethical discussions.

Example: Skynet, from the Terminator series is a good example of superintelligence in the fictional world.

 2. History of Artificial Intelligence

• AI isn’t a new phenomenon that has appeared in the world of today. It has been around for several years and has not been the same at some point.
•  1940s-1950s: AI was defined for the first time by Alan Turing who designed the well-known Turing Test that helps to establish the possibility of the machine’s intelligence.
• Example: The Turing test is popular in the media, for example, in the movie Ex Machina, where an AI is checked for its human-like behavior.
•  1970s-1980s: The appearance of expert systems can be considered as the significant step in the further evolution of AI. These systems were developed with an aim of providing solutions to certain problems in a manner that only a human expert would do.
• Example: The first version of medical diagnostic systems applied artificial intelligence in order to determine the most appropriate treatment for the patient according to his or her symptoms.
•  2000s-Present: Due to the development of the machine learning and deep learning, the use of AI has been on the rise.

• Example: Currently, AI is used to control self-driving cars such as Tesla and it is also behind Google search to give you the best results.

 3. What is Artificial Intelligence and How Does it operates?

 Its foundation is made of algorithms and models that mimic human thinking in the best possible way. The most popular are machine learning and neural networks which are also the most frequently used in various applications.

Machine Learning (ML):

It is a branch of AI which involves the use of past experiences in making decisions rather than being programmed for each eventuality.

Example: Since one of the most popular email systems worldwide is Gmail it is also important to look at how machine learning is used in their spam filters to determine spam messages from others.

Neural Networks:

Neural network is a set of algorithms which is designed based on the structure of human brain to process data.

Example: Algorithm like the ones used in Google Photos to identify faces and objects in images are based on neural networks.

There are three major types of learning in AI systems:

Supervised Learning:

It is trained on labeled data whereby the right answers are given.

Example: An example is a system that learns to identify cats in photographs; such a system is first presented with thousands of pictures of cats with labels.

Unsupervised Learning:

The system is provided with data which is not labelled in any way and has to identify relations by itself.

Example: Market segmentation in e-commerce which basically involves grouping of customers based on their buying behavior by use of AI.

Reinforcement Learning:

It has the ability to learn through experience and the process of reinforcement which includes feedback in form of reward or punishment.

Example: The self-driving cars are the autonomous vehicles which are trained through reinforcement learning so as to drive on the roads.

 4. Real Life Use of Artificial Intelligence

AI’s impact is widespread, and its applications are growing rapidly across various industries:

Healthcare:

Some of the tasks that AI support doctors in include diagnosing of diseases through images or patient’s information.

Example: Some of the examples include the use of IBM Watson in diagnosing cancer where it can make accurate predictions.

Finance:

AI is also used to identify fraudulent transactions that are made and also in the management of risks.

Example: This is the reason why banks have incorporated the use of Artificial Intelligence in identifying fraud cases in credit cards.

Transportation:

It supports the autonomous driving systems that are the essential part of the vehicle, to take proper decisions.

Example: Tesla and Waymo are some of the companies that are leading in the development of self-driven cars, which employ artificial intelligence to identify roads, other objects, traffic signs among others.

Entertainment:

It assist in content curation, for example, suggesting songs or video clips for the user to watch.

Example: Spotify has the ability to recommend new songs which may include new releases from artists that the user has been listening to through the use of artificial intelligence while Netflix has the same ability to recommend television shows to watch based on the history of shows that the user has watched.

5. Switching between the Benefits and Risks of AI.

AI is promising in many ways and can bring changes to almost every sphere of people’s life but it has its issues.

Benefits:

Efficiency: AI helps in reducing the time and efforts that are used in doing repetitive tasks.

Example: E-commerce sites’ AI chatbots offer round the clock customer service.

Accuracy: It is no doubt that AI is capable of doing calculations and data analysis which may be very difficult to do by humans.

Example: Some of the ways that AI can be of benefit to Amazon and other companies include, demand forecasting and supply chain optimization.

Challenges:Ethical Concerns: This is just but a way of saying that if the data feed provided to the AI systems is skewed, it will produce skewed results and hence unfair outcomes.

Example: Some studies showed that the performance of facial recognition system was low in identifying people of colour.

Job Displacement: Some of the concerns that people have include the fact that as the AI technology advances, it is likely to displace people from their jobs.

Example: This would mean that the automated production lines which are powered by Artificial Intelligence could replace many workers in the factories.

Conclusion:

Currently Artificial Intelligence is one of the most dynamic fields it is in the process of changing people’s lives. From the healthcare industry to transportation, Artificial Intelligence is improving the processes making them more effective. Although it has a number of advantages, it presents some issues which need to be solved, mainly in ethical and employment aspects. With advancements in AI, it is important to first of all know what AI entails as a first step in the future of the world.