What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for quite a long time. It is a phrase that we use quite a lot at the moment without any real understanding of what it actually is. For the most part you really don’t need to understand how it works in any detail. But I do think that unless you have a basic grasp of what it is you can become fearful because of the negative hype surrounding it.
There are cries from some quite respected corners of the scientific community that AI will take over jobs and eventually destroy mankind. That it could control you and make decisions for you or about you. This is already happening as people, companies use this technology to increase profits, make things seemingly easier to use and more efficient.
What does an AI look like?
There are many types of AI. They are used in very different ways and work in very different ways. There isn’t a single AI that does everything. So what is an AI? It is an algorithm which is a series of instructions in a coding language to perform a specific task. It looks for patterns and uses those patterns to predict an outcome. At the heart of this is what is called a neural network. This is nothing new, they have been around for decades.
It has been described as like the neurons in the brain which is the nearest best analogy. There is some relatively simple maths involved in how it works and learns from the data it gets. For instance it is fed the weather data for the last 10 years and tries to predict what the weather will be like tomorrow. Or it will look at thousands of pictures of animals so that it can predict what kind of animal it sees.
But why bother?
Most people could quite easily start to build their own AI model. There are lots of tools to help you do that. It is just requires patience and practise. You do not need to go to university, you do not need to be a maths genius or any kind of expert. I am not say it is very easy but it is within the grasp of the average person if they so wanted to learn. You can learn a language, learn to draw or paint or learn a musical instrument. The same is true of coding, if you can code then you can build an AI model.
Most people never try because it looks so alien, mysterious, unfathomable. Yet it is more accessible than you could think. I can’t give you a singular reason why you should learn coding and creating an AI model except to understand more of the world we live in. You could create something artistically with it, make money, start a company, get a job etc, etc, etc.
Conclusion
At the end of the day it is a tool we use, it is just an application. It can recognise your face to unlock your phone, that is AI right there. In itself there is nothing to fear what is the problem is who is controlling and using this very, very powerful technology. Also where is it going to take us, you and me in the future. It isn’t going to go away and it isn’t just a sci-fi thing, it is here and here to stay. Don’t let fear or greed get a grip, this is one reason to learn more about it, if not you then your children.
Image by DeepMind on unsplash
A very brief but good explanation about Artificial Intelligence from the BBC
