What is Artificial Intelligence? Everything you need to know about AI

The term Artificial Intelligence( also known as AI in short) means computers, robots or machines that display human-like intelligence. By human-like intelligence I mean, those machines will be capable of learning from experience, can take decisions, identify objects and lots more on their own.

When we hear the term AI, a picture of Intelligent robots comes into our mind. More or less exactly similar to the robots in the movies like The Terminator. Hold on, there is not just only one movie but in fact, many movies that illustrate the concept of AI-based robots. And they are Blade Runner, Westworld, 2001: Space Odyssey, The Matrix and so on.

The concept of Artificial Intelligence is not new in this modern world, but in fact, it is around for decades. So now let’s delve into the brief history of Artificial Intelligence.

A Brief History Of Artificial Intelligence:

The idea of the “machine that thinks” is linked to the ancient philosophers of Greece. In the year 1950, Alan Turing who was a British mathematician and logician published Computing Machinery and Intelligence. In which he proposed to consider the question “Can machines think?”. Alan Turing also introduced a test known as the “Turing test” or “imitation game“. The imitation game determines whether or not machines can think intelligently like humans or not.

In the year 1956, the first-ever conference of AI was held at Dartmouth College. John McCarthy first coined the term Artificial Intelligence. He is known as the father of AI. Because of his notable contribution to the field of computer science and AI.

After some time the term Artificial Intelligence was coined, the AI researchers at that time were facing some problems. And those problems were low memory and processing speeds. When several reports criticized the lack of progress in AI, the funding of Artificial Intelligence research was cut in the 1970s. And the interest was dropped off.

Later on, AI research resumed in the year 1980s. The time gap between the year 1974 and 1980 is known as to be “The First AI Winter”.Now, let us look at the types of AI.

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & Deep learning:

Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and deep learning are related to each other. So now, let’s look at these terms in details.

Artificial Intelligence:

The field of AI aims to create intelligent machines that can think and work on their own. It is a broad area of computer science. In fact, machine learning and deep learning is a part of it.

Machine Learning:

Machine Learning (ML) is a subcategory of Artificial Intelligence. It allows software applications to predict outcomes more accurately without being directly programmed to do so. Its algorithms are improved on the basis of experience and use of data. And it is used for a variety of applications, especially in computer vision and email filtering.

Deep Learning:

Deep learning is a subcategory of Machine Learning. So, the question arises why Deep Learning? Machine learning has some drawbacks like it cannot deal with a large amount of data. Another drawback of ML was it cannot handle real-world complex problems.

So to overcome that, Deep Learning has been introduced. Deep Learning can handle large amounts of data and handle real-world complex problems. Applications of Deep Learning are in the medical field, robotics, self-driving cars and language translations.

Types of AI:

AI is mainly categorized into two parts, i.e. AI based on capabilities and AI-based on functionality. So, now let’s have a look at these two categories in details.

AI based on capabilities:

1. Weak AI or Narrow AI:

Like the name suggests Narrow AI can perform certain task intelligently. Or in other words, we can say that Weak AI’s intelligence is only limited to the dedicated task. Currently, this is the most common form of AI that is available around us. Even if we try to use Weak AI beyond its limitations, it will fail in unpredictable ways.

Some examples of Narrow AI or Weak AI are Apple’s Siri, IBM Watson and other general examples include playing chess, image recognition, speech recognition etc.

2. Strong AI:

Strong AI machines are those AI machines that think and perform the task on their own without human intervention. It is also known as Artificial general intelligence and is still a theoretical concept in today’s world.

Artificial Intelligence based on functionality:

1. Reactive machines:

Reactive machines are those form of AI systems that do not store memories or past experiences for future actions. These machines focus on current situations and react best possible action accordingly. Few examples of reactive machines are IBM’s Deep Blue system and Google’s AlphaGo.

2. Limited Memory:

Limited memory machines usually store some data for a short period of time. The stored data can be utilized for a limited time period only. One of the best examples of limited memory machines is Self-Driving cars. The car stores information of the nearby vehicles, speed limit and other information for clear movements on the roads.

3. Theory of Mind:

This kind of Ai will understand people’s emotions, beliefs and will interact socially with humans. This type of AI machines is not developed yet. But the researchers are trying their best to develop and improve such kind of AI systems.

4. Self-Awareness:

Self-awareness AI is a kind of AI that will have its own consciousness, self-awareness and will be super intelligent. These machines will be much smarter than the human mind. Self-awareness AI does not exist in reality and is an imaginary concept.

Artificial Intelligence Applications:

Ecommerce:

With the help of AI, the recommendation of products to the customers is improved to a greater extent. The recommendation system looks for the customer’s interest, search history and preference. And according to these inputs it tries to recommend better products to the customers of the E-commerce company. This ultimately creates a strong bond between the customer and the company.

Healthcare:

AI is playing key role in Healthcare. It identifies chronic diseases as well as the cancer cells which increases chance of better diagonosis and treatment of the patients. AI uses the historical data and its itelligence for the discovery of the drugs for better treatment.

Social Media:

In Instagram the AI looks for the likes and accounts that you follow, for providing better experience to you on the explore tab.

Another social media company , Facebook uses AI technology along with a tool known as DeepText. This enables the social media giant Facebook, to understand the conversations better. It also facilitates the translation of the posts automatically to different languages.

Twitter which is popular among many people, also uses the AI technology on their platform.Its uses AI for fraud detection,hateful content and removing propaganda.Not only this Twitter also uses AI to recommend tweet to its users based on their interactions with other tweets.

Automobiles Industry:

When we are talking about the applications of AI we cannot forget its application on Automobiles industry.Self-driving cars are the best example of AI implemented on Vehicles. AI in vehicles, will provide better in-vehicle experience along with emergency braking system and lots more stuff.

Spam and Virus Prevention:

When it comes to spam and virus prevention with greater flexibility and accuracy AI solves this kind of problem.The intelligent system provides proactive protection and even detect new spam and virus elements.

So this all information about AI shows that this technology is proving really helpful to human beings and will be much more helpful in the future. But the use of technology depends upon the person’s intention. Whether he/she uses it for a good purpose or bad purpose. So one has to keep the criminal mindset of people away from such technologies. Let me know in the comments what you think about AI. That’s all for this post. thanks.

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