From movies like Terminator, The Matrix and Ex-Machina, to novels like City and I-Robot, we have all been haunted by the nightmare that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will win over human intellect and eventually take over the world. However, AI is not that terrifying. On the contrary, AI has revolutionized the contemporary world and brought drastic changes to many aspects of our everyday life.
What Is Artificial Intelligence?
AI is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines. While revolving around building up smart machines that can imitate humans and carry out tasks that necessitate human intelligence, AI has revolutionized the contemporary world by offering smart solutions into many societal problems.
AI has many advantages. It saves us time and energy by analyzing data at a much faster rate than humans do and automating repetitive tasks without needing a break. Furthermore, AI delivers consistent results and copes easily with detail-oriented jobs.
5 Important Dates to Remember About Artificial Intelligence
1950: Alan Turing questions the ability of machines to "think" by introducing the "Turing Test', which stands for the way of determining the capability of machines to think like humans.
1956: The academic field of AI is formally founded, and the term "AI" is coined by John McCarthy, during the "Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence".
1966: The first chatbot Eliza is created. It communicates with humans and is programmed to behave as a Rogerian psychotherapist.
1970s-1980s: The first AI winter. It?s a time when the public interest in AI wanes for the first time due to the lack of investment in this field.
1997: IBM?s chess-playing computer Deep Blue causes a stir by becoming the world chess champion after defeating the world chess champion Garry Kasparov.
2 Subsets of Artificial Intelligence
According to McKinsey, 60% of companies surveyed in late 2019 admit having implemented AI in their business strategy. Indeed, many businesses rely upon AI-based technologies in their industrial and commercial activities. Here are two subsets of AI commonly applied in today?s high-tech economy.
Machine Learning (ML)
ML is a subset of AI. It is the process of building models based on statistical methods or neural networks that detect specific elements among a substantial amount of data. These datasets are classified into categories predefined by humans through complex algorithms. The latter self-improves through the regular input of training data.
Deep Learning (DL)
DL is a subset of ML that attempts to simulate the way human brain processes information and identifies patterns by comparing them to previously memorized ones. It is essentially a multi-layered neural network that learns from tremendous amounts of data, and which manages to recognize, classify, and describe it with little human intervention.