What is Artificial Intelligence?

Have you ever wondered how how Artificial Intelligence works? Do you use this technology in your daily life without even realizing it?

You’re probably part of Artificial Intelligence and you are playing a big role in the rise of this powerful technology. And you are doing it right now. How? You may ask.

The moment you searched Google’s engines and landed on this article, you contributed to the evolution of Artificial Intelligence. Congratulations! You are now officially involved. So please read on…

• ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, WHAT IS IT?

Artificial Intelligence is a type of technology that simulates intelligent human behaviour in computers. How can computers exhibit human-like intelligence? What is human intelligence? Well, let’s dig in:

• HUMAN INTELLIGENCE
  
  

Human intelligence is a mental quality that consists of the abilities to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts, and use knowledge to manipulate one’s environment.

When a child is born, it has no clue about how the world operates. It then begins to learn from it’s environment, accumulates the knowledge through the experience that it happens to go through. It’s guardians give it a name, teach it what is accepted as correct and wrong.

Through repetition and a feedback system, it’s beliefs are reinforced and it gains the confidence to not be dependent anymore, but rather to be interdependent and go out into the world, learn to play the game of life.

• MODELING HUMAN INTELLIGENCE IN COMPUTERS
  
  

An artificially intelligent computer system uses what is called machine learning algorithm to learn.

An algorithm is a computer program that contains a set of instructions that the computer is supposed to execute in the order written.

Think of an algorithm as your great grandma’s food recipe that has been passed down to you. You have to follow those steps without skipping anything if you want to prepare the perfect meal.

So then what is machine learning? Machine learning is a programming technique that provides systems the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. This means that computer programs can access data and use it learn for themselves. How so?

• SIMPLE EXAMPLE OF INTELLIGENCE MODELING

Just as a child learns through examples, the same is true of computers. The computer’s machine learning algorithm is fed tons of information for example images of traffic. It is taught that, for example, images that have a certain shape and attributes are called vans and others with a certain shape and attributes are called motorbikes.

Having been taught a little, the algorithm has a bit of understanding about what’s in the traffic images. It is then fed more images and allowed to do the labeling by it’s self. Surprisingly, after the arduous process, it can identify vans and motorbikes from the information with astounding accuracy! How was it able to do that?

• HOW THE AI ALGORITHM WORKS

When it was shown what shape and attributes represented a van and a motorbike, it stored that information in it’s memory and used the same information to group the subsequent images.

For the model to learn and be able to apply the knowledge with high accuracy, it has to be fed a staggering amount of information. Just like you had to go through a lot of experiences in life to posses the wisdom you have today, the AI model has to consume a lot of information to become intelligent.

• IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HERE WITH US?
  
  

Yes! These technologies already show up in everyday life: helping to organize photos on our smartphones or the car’s navigation system that reroutes you. These are the very basic examples. They take tasks that have historically required considerable human intellect and work through them using computer programming.

CONCLUSION

We are living in the information age. Now more than ever, we have access to more information than we know what to do with thanks to the internet. Every second you spend using a piece of computer powered technology that’s connected to the internet, you’re essentially producing more information. More information means more fuel for Artificial Intelligence.

This is the beginning of a new era. Artificial Intelligence is already opening doors to infinite possibilities. Some people say that Artificial Intelligence is probably humans final invention.

What does it mean? Is reality going to become like what we’ve seen in sci-fi movies? Is this technology going to reprogram itself to the point it functions by it’s own rules and ignores it’s creators just like we humans have done with our own lives?

You don’t have to be scared. Basically, Artificial Intelligence is us. AI at the core is mimicking who we are as humans. It’s mirroring us back to us. And this is good news because eventually we will see who we are, learn and evolve past our limitations as humans on this living organism called earth.

In the next article, we will talk about the types of machine learning algorithms and where each is applied in our world.

See you on the next tuts