You can't read the news without hearing people talk about artificial intelligence or AI and even though it isn't completely new, the latest advancements, technologies, and applications are grabbing headlines because, for many, it's the first time they've probably had access to them.
Many people and companies have been using AI in some way for a while, but these people likely work in industries where AI is commonly used or have been using AI without even realising it. After all, every time you speak to your smartphone's virtual assistant, that's AI!
While being able to bark orders at your phone to schedule alarms and meetings, search the internet, or ask what the weather is like can be pretty useful, AI is so much more than just this one application of it.
Here, we'll briefly look at what AI is, what you can use it for, and what the future will likely hold for the technology.
What Exactly Is AI?
AI stands for artificial intelligence, which you'd think would make it pretty easy to define. AI is just a machine version of our own intelligence.
However, intelligence is hard to clearly define and you wouldn't exactly consider the first robots to paint cars very intelligent. They were just trained how to paint a car by a human and repeated this action. They hardly thought about what they were doing.
Artificial Intelligence is more complex and requires that machines exhibit skills including pattern recognition, natural language processing, and other examples of things that we could classify as advanced cognitive functions like those that humans are capable of.
It's also important that AI learns or gets smarter as it's used. You could easily program something to make decisions based on inputs, but an AI should also be able to know when it gets something wrong, be given feedback on its decisions, and improve somewhat. There are a number of ways this is done, but some examples include machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, etc.
The Different Types of AI
Every AI can be classified as one of three types: Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI or Narrow AI), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI or General AI), and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI or Super AI).
These different types of AI are basically judged in comparison to human intelligence and the things hitting the headlines now, though impressive, or still considered ANI.
Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)
Artificial Narrow Intelligence is AI that is limited by what it can do or is designed for a small number of tasks.
The types of AI being covered in the news each focus on a singular type of task such as writing text, creating images or videos, or searching the internet, for example.
With ANI, you'll need a different AI or solution for different tasks rather than an all-encompassing AI that does it all.
An example of this would be a chatbot for customer service that uses language processing to understand queries and provide users with the answers they're looking for without the need for human intervention from a customer service agent.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
Artificial General Intelligence would be an AI that's comparable to human intelligence and fully capable of doing everything the human mind can do.
However, this is unlikely to be arriving anytime soon as we're still studying the depths and complexities of the human mind and until we start understanding how it all works, we'll be unlikely to be able to replicate it in AI.
That said, it could still be possible to create AI at this level without fully understanding the human mind and it could be something that could actually tell us a lot about brains and how they work as AI research starts to reach this level.
Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)
If you've figured out the trend already, that's because you're a human and can spot patterns. Good for you!
Artificial Super Intelligence is AI at a level beyond that of human intelligence. This is something straight out of science fiction and you don't have to worry about the rise of the machines just yet as this kind of AI is only spoken about in theory and nothing we have yet even comes close to AGI, let alone ASI.
Why AI Is So Important
Just because the AI that we hear a lot about is technically at the bottom of the theoretical AI hierarchy, it doesn't mean that it isn't impressive or hugely important.
Certain technological advances come along and change the way humans do things forever and AI is one of those technologies. These technologies include things like the printing press, the assembly line, telecommunication, aviation, and the internet (to name just a few) and AI could be something that leaves its mark on human civilisation.
It wouldn't be surprising at all if there comes a time when we start talking about periods as being before or after the widespread adoption of AI, just like we can talk about a time before the internet, before TV, or even before radio.
AI is changing the world and we're at a point where it's incredibly important that we work out in what ways it can and should do that.
Where Is AI Used in Everyday Life?
We mentioned that AI has applications in various industries, but the average person will likely recognise the AI they regularly carry in their pocket: their virtual assistant.
Whether you speak to Cortana, Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa or one of the other proprietary virtual assistants, that's AI.
AI is far more widespread than you may think, it's just that AI is mostly being used behind the scenes and we don't interact with it directly. E-commerce, social media, and websites like YouTube all use AI to work out what we want to consume be it products or content.
If you've used Google Maps or a similar product to plot a route somewhere, you've likely used AI, too. These kinds of solutions use AI to make decisions on which route is the fastest by taking real-time information about things like traffic flow, road closures, etc. rather than just basing the decision on the overall shortest route from just the map.
Your bank is likely using AI to protect you from fraud. AI is used to make a judgement on whether or not a transaction is likely to be fraudulent based on several factors including your own spending habits.
What Are the Benefits of AI?
The best thing about AI is that we can get it to do the things that we don't really want to do. Monotonous and boring tasks can be automated and it saves a lot of us from having to waste our time with them. It's also useful that these kinds of tasks are the ones where errors will creep in over time as humans need to eat, sleep, and do other things to remain living organisms. AI doesn't tire and it doesn't need to sleep. That doesn't mean AI can't make mistakes, but the mistakes won't be through fatigue.
AI can also do certain tasks far more quickly than a human. For these tasks, things that would take humans hours, days, or even weeks can be completed in fractions of a second. Again, this is only for certain tasks, though, and there are some things that a human brain can do so quickly that AI can't even come close to competing with us.
Artificial Intelligence is a technology that could greatly affect many businesses across a plethora of industries. AI systems, especially those using deep learning algorithms and neural networks, can process vast amounts of data far more quickly than humans. As this could allow companies to automate so many tasks, improve customer service, and optimise many business processes, a lot of companies will be looking very closely at the technology.
In certain industries, AI seems almost inevitable. Since machine learning models learn from the data and improve over time, especially when it comes to language processing, image recognition, and cognitive tasks, these applications could become incredibly powerful in the coming years.
What Risks Does AI Pose?
There are also downsides and ethical concerns surrounding AI. Products like ChatGPT, for example, have been able to create text that looks like it was written by a human (though the accuracy of what it writes has come under scrutiny) and this has a lot of educators concerned about the validity of students' work if it was all done by an AI.
This has also had certain people concerned about the future of their jobs as it looks like certain AI applications could soon do their work for them far more quickly and effectively. Even if the AI can't do a job as well as a human, it can do it much more quickly and much more cheaply, and if history has taught us anything, this is what most businesses are looking for: quantity over quality.
Once an AI can do an acceptable job for a fraction of the cost of a human, these jobs could be eradicated provided there aren't any protections in place and a lot of people are scrambling to work out what relationship we'll have with AI in the future and whether we should protect jobs from it.
Things are likely to change quite a bit in the coming years when it comes to AI and it remains to be seen what our future with AI will look like.
Where Can I Learn More About AI?
Artificial intelligence is a deeply fascinating subject and one that isn't going anywhere. If you'd like to learn more about AI or even work in AI, you can learn with a private tutor specialising in it.
There are tutors available for all budgets all over the country and around the world so you're bound to find a professional tutor that works for you.
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