Artificial intelligence is artificial intelligence demonstrated by artificially intelligent machines, rather than human intelligence shown by humans. In other words, a computer which is able to perform any function can be said to possess artificial intelligence. This was once deemed to be impossible with current technology. However, it is now possible to program such computers to perform a wide array of tasks, including speech recognition, image processing, natural language processing and task oriented software development. Such capabilities have the potential to revolutionize industries and bring humanity closer together.
One of the most interesting areas of research in this area is deep learning. This field uses large databases (comprised of images, text and audio) from various sources in order to achieve and analyze specific results. The best example of an artificially intelligent system is the recently developed Caffeine. It has already revolutionized medical transcription by providing highly intelligent machines with the ability to transcribe medical documents accurately and quickly.
Experts believe that in the not-too-distant future artificial intelligence will be used in every day consumer technology. Will this be the next wave of the tech industry? Well, some futurists see a future when artificial intelligent devices are the everyday appliances we use. They may even become a compulsory part of our lives!
So what exactly is artificial intelligence? It can be defined as a machine or software which operates like a human brain in the sense that it can reason, learn, remember, anticipate, solve problems and make decisions. Humans are far more complex than this and are much more versatile too. Hence, it makes no sense to try and construct artificially intelligent robotic humans, for all we know, they may end up like human children!
Thus, artificial intelligence is the combination of computer hardware and software, used to give machines the ability to think, reason and perform complex tasks. Today’s computers are so advanced that they already perform many of these tasks, thanks to clever software programs. But we need the input of an individual to give a machine the right training. A good example of software is language translation. Though it may seem trivial, language translation can be complicated, both because of its contextual relevance and the intricacies involved.
For instance, think about Google translate. Though it performs incredibly well, it is nowhere close to being a complete artificial intelligence. The main reason why such software is not perfect is that it has to deal with millions and billions of web pages, each written in their own unique language. If you are writing a document in Spanish, the program needs to understand both the grammar and the meaning of the sentence. Hence, even though the English sentence seems grammatically correct, it may not be a good idea to use it as the source document for the Spanish one.
How would you feel if you were given the intelligence to build your own artificially intelligent computer, only to find out that it was not as smart as you expected it to be? Although some programmers have managed to create working programs, they still remain at the developmental stage. An artificially intelligent computer could be built today, and used to perform everyday tasks, but in the future such technology will be much more evolved. Today’s artificially intelligent computers would probably be able to translate between languages, or at least have some knowledge of languages, like English, French and German, but that would be as far as they would go.
In other words, the future of software is clearly ahead of us, and we are behind the technology. However, we need not worry about that because humans are far from controlling the future of computers. We are, however, constantly improving our software so that it performs better, smarter and is more intuitive than ever before. That is the key to AI becoming intelligent and truly self-aware.
