Artificial Intelligence

With today’s fast-growing world, technologies are getting different and better day by day. One of the most favored technologies today is Artificial Intelligence.

In today’s world we are surrounded by various Artificial Intelligence technologies – from gaming, painting, self driven cars, to robots helping and guiding human beings in various ways; we are all virtually surrounded by Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence is a field of computer science which has the ability to make a machine work or think like a human being.

Artificial Intelligence is mainly composed of:

  • Reasoning
  • Learning
  • Perception
  • Problem Solving
  • Linguistic Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence – Meaning

The word artificial intelligence is a combination of two words -Artificial and Intelligence. Artificial means which is made by man and Intelligence means that it has some kind of ability to think and manipulate things.

Hence, we can define Artificial Intelligence as “Developing such computer programs which will help in solving complex problems with the application of processes that humans would have followed.”

In simple language we can say that artificial intelligence is a study which describes how computers can be made to do things which people at presentare doing in a better manner.

Artificial Intelligence – History

The concept of AI was formally initiated in 1956. The term artificial intelligence was given by John McCarthy. But much before that Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead had published an article which revolutionized formal logic.

Then in 1950, Alan Turing proposed the Turing Test. Turing test provides the basis for a satisfactory definition of intelligence in machines. If a machine passes the test, then the machine is termed intelligent.

In this test, there are two humans and a machine to be evaluated. One person becomes the interrogator. The other person and machine are put in two separate rooms and are asked to answer some questions via teletype. The machine tries to fool the interrogator by acting as if it is human. Based on the answers given by both, the interrogator tries to make out that the machine is in which room. If the machine succeeds in fooling the interrogator, then the machine is termed as intelligent.

But, the success of this test lies on the following points:

  • Clear definition of the test.
  • The amount of knowledge the machine would need in order to pass the test.
  • Rules or constraints to be followed during test.

Artificial Intelligence – Goal

The main goal of Artificial Intelligence is to improve the human related computer functionality such as their ability to learn things, give reasons, plan strategies, problem solving using natural language processing (NLP), enhance the ability to move and manipulate objects and many more.

What is Knowledge?

AI technique is a method which helps exploit knowledge. Knowledge is the act of state of knowing.  It is the key element behind every intelligent system. Knowledge can be domain specific or common sense knowledge. Knowledge has some of the following characteristics:

  • Knowledge maybe procedural, declarative or heuristics.
  • Knowledge must be vast.
  • Knowledge is learning about facts, principles, specialisation, practise etc.
  • Knowledge is constantly changing.
  • Knowledge can take the form of meta knowledge that is knowledge about knowledge. This knowledge helps in controlling and planning the reasoning process.
  • The organisation and usage of knowledge is different from each other.

Artificial Intelligence- Techniques

In order to exploit the knowledge obtained by the AI systems, AI uses three important techniques. These techniques are as follows:

  1. Search – It is a way of solving the problem by selecting a best solution by employing a direct or indirect approach. Two ways namely Brute Force Search and Heuristics Search techniques are used to solve problems.
  2. Knowledge Representation– In order to solve problems in AI knowledge plays a very important role. Solving AI problems requires a lot of knowledge of context, language, visuals, particular domain or knowledge of how to reason. Hence, it is required that knowledge must be represented efficiently and meaningfully.
  3. Abstraction–It is a way of separating important features and variations from unimportant ones.

Artificial Intelligence – Applications

Artificial Intelligence is used in various fields. Some of them are:

  • Gaming: Artificial Intelligence is used in games like chess, N queens’ problem, river crossing to name a few.
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP): Here computers are made to understand the language being spoken and respond accordingly.
  • Expert Systems: Artificial Intelligence helps in making computers which assist humans by giving them suitable advices.
  • Speech Recognition: With the help of Artificial Intelligence, we have devised devices which understand human speech and respond according to the instructions given. Siri, Google Assistant to name a few examples.
  • Hand Writing Recognition: With Artificial Intelligence some devices recognize what is written in human writings and they interpret it thereof.
  • Robots: Artificial Intelligence helps create robots which not only reduce human efforts in daily tasks but also help them in many other ways. These are being used in restaurants, hospitals, schools and even offices these days.

Advantages of AI

 With the advancement in the field of artificial intelligence, it gives us the following advantages:

  • Fewer Mistakes–Machines tend to make fewer mistakes as compared to humans. as a result, the solutions to the problem are more accurate.
  • Fast – Machines are faster than humans. Hence, they can solve problems at a much faster pace compared to humans.
  • Reliable -Machines tend to make less mistakes as a result there are more reliable in finding accurate solutions to problems.
  • Increased performance–AI enhances the performance by speeding up the work. It helps in multitasking also.
  • Works Effortlessly – Machines tend to work in a 24 x 7 environment hence it works without any need of break. Hence increasing the output.
  • Efficient Decision Making – Machines like expert systems help humans in taking better decisions by assisting them with the required knowledge they possess. Machines tend to take better decisions as they do not get emotional.
  • Helping in repetitive jobs –humans tend to get bored when doing repetitive jobs. but this is not the case with machines. Hence, machines can do the repetitive jobs with ease and efficiency.

Disadvantages of AI

Besides all these advantages artificial intelligence has a darker side too. Some of the disadvantages of artificial intelligence are as follows:

  • Expensive–In order to meet the changing requirements of hardware and software, these need to be maintained, upgraded and even replaced from time to time. Hence, a huge amount of cost is involved for these.
  • Lack of Creativity–Machines made using AI usually work on what they are programmed to do. They cannot give proper output if they are asked to something out of the box. If they are asked to something like this, then they may yield wrong or irrelevant outputs.
  • Lack of Emotions–Machines can do work in a better way but it is not the case when it comes to taking decisions based on someone’s emotions. Hence, machines cannot develop emotional bonds if needed.
  • Unemployment –As AI does many works easily and without any delays or lags, the machines made using AI are fast replacing humans in many fields. With more and more of advancements, there would be employment issues in future.

Conclusion

To conclude we can say that Artificial Intelligence has a number of advantages and disadvantages. But with more and more advancements in the field of Artificial Intelligence, it helps us in creating new and more intelligent machines. These machines are capable enough to expand their knowledge by Machine and take better decisions based on Machine Learning.