If you are a technology fanatic, you must remember the first time Steve Jobs introduced us to the iPhone at Macworld in 2007. The whole world went crazy after seeing the brilliance of that phone. Four years later, the world was set on fire by Apple’s Siri, a virtual assistant that came with the iPhone at that time.
Today, Siri needs no introduction, but we can do a little bit of research to find out the basis of Siri. Yes, today we are talking about artificial intelligence, a.k.a. AI.
Siri is powered by AI. It is an AI-based product. And not only Siri, but there are also many AI-based products, such as manufacturing robots, self-driving cars, virtual travel booking agents, chatbots, and so on available today to make our lives easier.
So what exactly is artificial intelligence? How good is it? And how AI is helping us in our daily lives. Today, in this article, we will discuss AI, its components, and some of its pros and cons to help you understand the existence of AI.
What is Artificial Intelligence? [Definition]
Artificial intelligence can be termed as the ability of machines, software, and other artificial tools to think and respond like human beings. Humans use both their intelligence and emotions to make a decision.
In the case of artificial machines, intelligence can be programmed. However, emotions are natural and can not be developed using any language. So AI in devices is the extent to which a device can reach to match human intelligence and perform similarly. In other words, artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science concerned with building a more innovative world.
Types of Artificial Intelligence
1. Weak AI
This is the artificial intelligence we use daily. Its examples include Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, chatbots, voice and image recognition systems, Microsoft Azure AI, and product recommendation systems. Weak AI is also known as Narrow AI. It is designed to process data to perform some tasks.
2. Strong AI
Strong AI is also known as Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). This type of AI does not exist as of now. However, AI researchers are working on it. ASI is a part of theoretical AI and is believed to have consciousness and intelligence identical to or even better than human beings.
A strong example of ASI can be seen in fictional books or movies like Avengers: Age of Ultron and The Matrix.
Deep Learning vs. Machine Learning
You must have heard the terms deep learning and machine learning repetitively. These two words are often used interchangeably, considering that both terms are the same. This is, however, not the truth.
Deep learning (DL) and machine learning (ML) are branches (or subsets) of AI, with deep learning categorized as a sub-field (subset) of machine learning.
Machine learning is a branch of computer science that enables a computer to learn without being programmed. ML may use historical data to predict the outcome of events.
These types of learnings are critical to enterprises because they help predict customers’ behavior. Tech giants like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Uber leverage machine learning in their operations.
Deep learning is more algorithm-oriented and uses multiple neural networks to understand data. “Deep” refers to more than three neural networks. The neural networks are responsible for behaving like a human brain, allowing any computer program to recognize patterns and solve problems accordingly.
Neural networks are known to be at the heart of deep learning algorithms. They respond in the same way as neurons in our brain do. Larger data sets can be used in DL with no human intervention.
Applications of Artificial Intelligence
As mentioned earlier, our generation is surrounded by the manifestations of artificial intelligence. Here is a list of a few AI applications that we use daily and have made our lives easier:
Speech Recognition
Also known as Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), it uses the voice of human beings as input data and processes to give results accordingly. We can use ASR systems to give commands to our device to, for example, type a text for us, do any kind of web search for us, or tell us about the weather forecast.
The perfect examples of speech recognition are Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri. The universal language, English, is understandable to all the assistants. However, programs can be made to let them understand as many languages as possible.
Customer Service
How often do you visit a shopping website and get welcomed by a bot? That bot trying to talk to you and understand your demands is the best example of this application of artificial intelligence.
Chatbots are designed to ask some questions from you (usually FAQs) and understand your need to visit that particular website. These bots are changing the way businesses engage with their customers. They may also provide advice based on your behavior on that website.
Along with modifying the way customers interact with the enterprise, these bots are, unfortunately, also killing the jobs of human agents who were earlier available to perform the same task.
Computer Vision
This AI application helps you in geotagging. Whenever you upload an image, video, or any other visual, this application will try to read that visual and give you recommendations accordingly. After reading that particular visual, the ability to provide suggestions is what makes it different from image recognition.
This application is featured on social media platforms within photo-tagging. This application of artificial intelligence can also identify people in an image, not only the background location. Apart from social media, this application is highly used in self-driving cars.
Recommendation Engines
Ever wondered how you search for one thing on google, and that particular thing gets displayed on your social media or YouTube. Well, recommendation engines are designed to increase sales of a business digitally.
The algorithm is designed to understand user interests from their search history. This is how ads get displayed on YouTube and how it recommends videos based on your search history.
Conclusion
To conclude what has been stated so far, we can say that artificial intelligence is the new IBM of the 21st century. IBM in the 20th century grew exponentially. The same is expected to happen in the field of artificial intelligence.
All the IT giants are focusing on AI to build their dominance in the IT sector. With the hopes of getting ample opportunities in AI, we wish you good luck if you are planning to build a career in this field.
