Introduction To Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the most popular buzz word in the world of Information Technology. Every businessman wants to inculcate AI in their operation. Let’s try and understand what is Artificial Intelligence and how it helps the businesses to operate efficiently.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

According to John McCarthy, the father of Artificial Intelligence, “The science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs” is the definition of Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence, as the name suggests, is imparting intelligence to the machines so that the machines operate like human beings. Artificial intelligence is that sector in computer science which emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work, operate and react like human beings. Artificial Intelligence is used in decision making by the machines considering the real-time scenario. An Artificially Intelligent machine reads the real-time data, understands the business scenario and reacts accordingly. Some of the activities that the artificially intelligent machines are designed for are:

• Speech recognition
• Learning
• Planning
• Problem-solving

Artificial intelligence has now become a very important part of Information Technology. This branch aims to create machines which are intelligent.

Artificial Intelligence has highly technical and specialized research associated with it. The biggest problems with artificial intelligence include coding and programming computers for certain functions like:

• Knowledge
• Reasoning
• Problem-solving
• Perception
• Learning
• Planning
• Ability to manipulate

The process of transforming a computer to a computer controlled robot or designing software that thinks and reacts exactly the way a human being thinks is what Artificial Intelligence is all about.

In order to use Artificial Intelligence to develop intelligent systems, it is necessary that one understands how the human brain functions. How the brain thinks, learns, decides and operates while solving a problem is to be studied thoroughly. The result thus obtained must be applied to the software in order to develop smart and intelligent systems.

The core concept of Artificial Intelligence research is Knowledge Engineering. Machines can only act, operate and react like human beings if they provide enough information relating to the business and the world. Hence, it is important that Artificial intelligence should have access to all the information regarding the objects, categories, properties, and relations between all of the business use cases so that the machine can efficiently implement Knowledge Engineering. The task of imparting the machines with common sense, decision making, reasoning, and problem-solving power is quite difficult and tedious.

Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence

The man has been using computer systems for a while now. While machines have always helped human beings, man always thought about exploring these slaves more and more. This curiosity led man to a question “Can a machine be made to think and operate like human beings?”

Hence, with an objective of making the machines that operate and react like human beings began the development of Artificial Intelligence.

Goals of Artificial Intelligence

1. To Create Intelligent & Expert Systems

The development began to making systems which exhibit intelligent behavior. The functions that were expected out of these machines are learning, demonstrating, explaining, and advising its users.

2. To Inculcate Human Intelligence into the Machines

Creating systems and developing software that understands, think, learn, and behave like humans.

What Contributes to Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence is essentially science, technology – that is based on various disciplines. The areas of studies like Computer Science, Biology, Psychology, Linguistics, Mathematics, and Engineering.

The main objective and a major challenge in Artificial Intelligence is developing the computer functions that are associated by attributes such as human intelligence which includes reasoning, learning, reacting, decision making and problem-solving.

One or multiple attributes from the ones mentioned above can be used to develop an intelligent machine.

Machine Learning is a core part and a subset of Artificial Intelligence. Making machines learn without any kind of supervision is very difficult and hence requires the ability to understand the data like identifying patterns in streams of inputs.

This is very different from learning with supervision. Learning with supervision involves actions like classification and numerical regressions. Classification is the process of determining what category the object belongs to. The process of regression deals with obtaining a set of numerical input and thereby discovering functions that enable the generation of suitable outputs for the respective inputs.

Computational Learning Theory is a very well defined branch of theoretical computer science that uses Mathematical Analysis which is done using Machine Learning Algorithms.

The perception of the machine, reaction, and decision making totally depends on the capability of the machine to use inputs from various sensors to deduce various aspects of the environment. For eg. The computer vision analyses the visual inputs and facial recognition, object recognition and gesture recognition are the subsets of the overall analysis.

Robotics is another major field which is somewhat related to Artificial Intelligence. Various tasks handled by robots are navigation, object manipulation. The subproblems being, localization, mapping and motion planning.

Programming Without and With Artificial Intelligence

Let’s compare the basic programming of a system and how different they are when developed with and without the use of Artificial Intelligence:

Challenges in Artificial Intelligence

There are two sides to every coin. AI also comes with its own challenges. Theoretically, this may seem simpler, buy in the real-time, AI has certain challenges and the knowledge and the program has its unwelcome properties. These include:

• Its volume is huge, more than what can be imagined
• The program and the guidelines are not at all well-organized or well-formatted. Hence, it becomes difficult to use it efficiently
• It keeps changing constantly. Hence, one has to always be updated

What is Artificial Intelligence Technique?

In order to overcome these challenges, AI Technique is used. It is a process to organize and efficiently use the knowledge so that −

• The providers of the information should be able to perceive it
• Making changes to the data and the program should be easy and should be easily modified to correct errors
• Even though, the program being inaccurate or incomplete, it should be useful in multiple scenarios
• Given that programs using Artificial Intelligence are very complex, these AI techniques should elevate the speed of execution of these programs, thus, optimizing the efficiency

Applications of Artificial Intelligence

We have seen that using AI has many advantages in the programs where real-time data is to be used and manipulated. AI has been used and is dominant in various fields where reading, manipulating real-time data is necessary such as −

1. Gaming

The strategic games like Chess, Poker and Tic Tac Toe require the assessment of real-time data. The machine should be able to think of various possible actions and should be able to weigh those options and make a decision based on heuristic knowledge. AI plays a crucial role in these strategic games.

2. Natural Language Processing

In order to make the program run efficiently, it is necessary that the machines the language of different users. The machine should not only be adaptive to various languages but also various dialects and accents. AI is proven to be very useful in such use cases.

3. Expert Systems

The main function of an intelligent machine is decision making. These machines require software that accepts information as input, understands it, weighs various options and comes to a conclusion. These machines are used to impart reasoning to the given situation. Such software provides explanation and advice to the users to make informed decisions.

4. Vision Systems

Visual input is that form of information that is crucial and difficult to interpret. Hence a system integrated with Intelligence, must read, understand, interpret and comprehend the visual inputs and make decisions based on this information.

Some examples of these applications are –

• A drone, spying camera or a spying airplane takes photographs, videos, which are used to understand the map of the area or figure out spatial information.
• Clinical expert systems use cameras inside the body and are often used by the doctors to diagnose the patient.
• Use of computer software is used in Police investigation for facial recognition. This program can identify the face of the suspect having a record in the police system called with the portrait made with the description the witness gives to the forensic artist.

1. Speech Recognition

Some systems imparted with Artificial Intelligence are designed to make them capable of hearing the voice and comprehending the language in order to understand the meaning of the words. This comprehension is not only in the terms of the words but also in terms of sentences, their meanings, and the tone while human talks in various languages to the system. The software is built to recognize different accents, dialects, slang words, background noise, change in the voice modulation, change in the voice due to pain, cold, etc.

2. Handwriting Recognition

The kind of software is programmed so as to read the text. This text can be written using a pen or pencil on paper. The text can also be on a screen written by a mouse or using a stylus. It can read the text and recognize the shapes of the letters and numbers and then convert it into editable text that can be manipulated, changes and stored, thus, increasing the speed of the process.

3. Intelligent Robots

Robots are machines that are programmed as the slaves built to perform the tasks commanded by a master. They are built with various sensors. These sensors read the physical data as input from the real world. This physical data is in the form of light, heat and temperature, movement and pressure, sound, obstruction, spatial coordinates and bump. They are installed with efficient processors, multiple sensors and huge storage memory. All this is installed to exhibit intelligence. Besides, they are capable of adapting to the changing environment and learning from their mistakes.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Below are the advantages and disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence which are as follows:

Advantages:

• The error rate, when compared to the human counterpart, is much lower
• The precision, accuracy, and speed with which AI systems work is incredible
• Can work with equal efficiency in hostile environments
• Complete dangerous tasks which pose challenges to man, it becomes possible to perform tasks like exploring space without any physical damage to humans
• Mining and digging fuels become easy when such machines are used
• Repetitive, monotonous and tedious tasks can be taken care of without losing on efficiency
• Prediction and Decision Making
• Detecting frauds become easier especially in card-based systems
• Organize and manage records
• Robotic pets can be built to interact with people and help reduce depression and inactivity
• Making rational decisions as the machines think logically without emotions

Disadvantages:

• A building, rebuilding, and repairing requires skilled professional and costs a lot of money and time
• Storage is expensive
• Access and retrieval of data from the memory may not be as efficient as the human system
• Machines can be programmed to learn and get better but not as good as humans
• The scope of their operations is restricted to the program written
• They could never receive creativity that humans have
• Unemployment is the biggest threat because of development in intelligent machines
• Lazy as humans are, they can become too dependent on machines and underutilize their mental capabilities
• Machines, in wrong hands, can easily lead to a destruction

Conclusion

This was a short article on the much-hyped word “Artificial Intelligence”. Along with advantages, AI also comes with certain challenges and disadvantages. It is up to the business to evaluate whether investing in such technologies is necessary and profitable.

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