Artificial Intelligence: Simply Explained

The most amazing yet perplexing creation of all time to humans is humans themselves.

And yet, today we know more about the world outside than the world within us. But this quest to understand how we work and what makes us tick is also linked to the creation of robots, and what runs them, the Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Even though we are hearing about AI only in recent years, it goes way back to the 1950s. Alan Turing is crowned as the father of AI. Back in the day, he invested in a test – now known as the Turing Test- based on natural language conversation with a machine. It is a method of inquiry in AI for determining whether or not a computer is capable of thinking like a human being. Turing proposed that a computer can be said to possess artificial intelligence if it can mimic human responses under specific conditions.

But let’s first understand what AI really is.

So, what is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence involves using computers to do things that traditionally require human intelligence . This means creating algorithms to classify, analyze, and draw predictions from data. It also involves acting on data, learning from new data, and improving over time the results derived from the said data.

But then again, let’s get to a simpler example of what an Artificial Intelligence is.

This can’t be explained any more simply, unless you aren’t a movie buff, in this age of technological development where science has explicitly started drawing inspiration from the realm of Sci-Fi!

If you’ve seen Marvel’s Iron Man, Avengers, Wanda Vision, or Spider Man, you have encountered an AI already in the form of Jarvis, Ultron, Vision, Karen, Friday, Edith, or even Dum-E (the robot Tony Stark made in his father’s workshop).

Why even talk about such recent movies at all? You can see to the 1985 Blockbuster itself made around the concept of AI (although as losing control and destroying humanity, but don’t worry on that, those are pretty much unfounded and only for plot development, not to mention we are still far from that…for a few decades at least.) with the T-1000, and even further back when the 2001: A Space Odyssey released in the year 1963 introduced HAL9000.

That brings back memories, doesn’t it.

The Reality

But is any of its capabilities even real? Can they really communicate, think and act like they do in the movies?

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke

If you’ve lived in this technologically advancing world long enough to open Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or even your email inbox, you have encountered an AI at its finest.

If you’ve contacted Amazon support or asked Siri or Alexa for the weather, you, my dear friend, have encountered an AI at its finest!

And why do I say “at its finest”? Because to a programmer such as myself, like magic, it……..Read more