Artificial Intelligence has transformed from a new technology to a central part of our everyday lives. The history of Artificial Intelligence dates back to the early- mid 1900s. The idea of Artificial Intelligence became widely known to the public through pop culture representations of human-like machines, seen in “the Jetsons’ ‘ and “The Wizard of Oz”. Behind the scenes, a generation of dedicated researchers continued to develop the beginnings of what we know as AI today. By the mid 20th century, this idea of a futuristic reality became a heavily researched technology. This exploration was spring boarded into action with the help of Alan Turning, a british researcher who explored the mathematical capabilities of machines to perform operations associated with human abilities. Even with Turing’s technological breakthroughs, lack of advancement and expensive operation costs caused the speed of AI development to slow until later in the 20th century. In the 1990’s AI became highly publicized through programs like IBM’s “Deep Blue”, a computer program that defeated the best of the best in chess. Evolving greatly from Turing’s first computational machine, AI now represents a plethora of different technologies that work to make our world more efficient.
In order to understand the applications of Artificial Intelligence today, it is also important to understand what makes something “intelligent”. With the goal of AI being so broad, it can be difficult to understand exactly what classifies as an AI machine. AI is an encompassing term that refers to a branch of computer science that works to develop technology that is capable of performing actions that are traditionally executed by humans.
Today, AI can be split into two main categories: Narrow Artificial Intelligence and Artificial General Intelligence. Narrow Artificial Intelligence, referred to as “Weak AI” consists of the AI that we see in our everyday lives. This category is made up of machines that focus on executing specific tasks very well. However, there are many limitations on the computational capacity of this intelligence compared to human capability.
The second category of AI is Artificial General Intelligence (AGI,) referred to as “Strong AI”. This type of intelligence can be compared to the sort of “all powerful” machine intelligence that we see on television. This type of machine would have human level “intelligence”, with no limitations compared to human ability. While a reality with this powerful machine may be frightening to some and entrancing to others, this type of AI is not seen to be achieved in the near future.
Buzz around AI in the media today often relates to revolutionary feats, such as driverless cars and machines that surpass human ability. This can make it easy to lose sight of how AI affects us daily. From the simple communications through our phones, to the way we get to work in the
morning, these examples will help create a more whole picture of how AI affects us regularly. Here are three easy to understand applications of AI.
Your Morning Commute:
You are running late for that interview you have been preparing for for months. It is a busy Monday morning and you are trying to avoid traffic at all costs. You open your Google Maps (Maps) and presented to you is a route that avoids the heavy concentrations of vehicles and redirects you as traffic statuses update. Even at 7am in the morning you are interacting with AI. Using the vast amounts of data collected from smartphone users, Google is able to power their predictions of the morning traffic by analysing this data of your location. Using algorithms and a data set that is large and constantly updating, Maps can suggest commutes that help you access the fastest routes. This form of AI can also easily incorporate user information about car crashes, road damage, along with other disruptions that can cause traffic jams. Google Maps analyzes these diverse inputs to then output routes that are custom to your area, current situation, and changing status. Thanks to AI, you make it to your interview ontime, with three minutes to spare.
“Hey Siri, Text Mom..”:
You are driving home from your interview and you want to text your mom to tell her how it went. You know not text while driving, so as second nature you say “Hey Siri, text mom and tell her ‘I absolutely crushed it!’” Siri responds to your requests, reads you back your text and sends it. Speech recognition systems used to translate these requests into action are something that only a decade ago seemed straight from a science fiction movie. Technological advancements over the past couple of decades have evolved to use voice recognition to create personal assistants – powered by AI. Today, we use voice recognition technology to complete simple tasks, like sending a text to mom. Newer voice recognition technologies have reached passing just responding to requests, but now use your personal information and trends of your actions to produce personalized suggestions about music, routines, purchases, etc.
Facial Recognition in Social Media:
You spend a lovely weekend with your friends on the beach and you want to post the best moments captured on camera on your Facebook page. You upload the pictures and automatically your friend’s face is highlighted, with a suggestion to tag her account in your post. Without any thought you accept the suggestion and post the picture. This suggestion to tag your friend is yet another application of AI. Here, Facebook uses algorithms that take already stored facial inputs of your friend from her pictures and use this information to fuel advanced facial recognition software. This software can then recognize your friend’s face in newly uploaded pictures based on the analysis of past data. This software is then able to take in new data sets (like the picture you uploaded) to more accurately recognize your friends’ faces in future pictures. Thanks to AI, your friend can be seen as the lucky individual who escaped the cold weather with you for a quick getaway.
AI is a growing and exciting technology that promises a future full of revolutionary developments. While researchers work to continue to build machines that strive to match human intelligence, it is easy to lose sight of how AI affects us on a smaller scale. Even though these
examples are just the tip of the iceberg of the ways we use this AI daily, they show how AI helps us accomplish the tasks we perform everyday.