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Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skill. As humans we have intelligence to learn many skills and apply them. We also use our intelligence in decision making.  
  • Artificial means something that is made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural. 
  • The difference between human and machine: Let us understand with an example. Suppose you have to cross a street with very heavy traffic. So how will you do that? You will first look in the left direction to check whether any vehicle is coming from that side. Then you will look in the right direction to check the same.  
  • You will also try to judge the speed of approaching vehicles from both sides. You will calculate whether you have the time to cross the road before these vehicles reach the crossing point. You do this every time you cross the road as you are aware of the danger of road accidents. Once you feel safe to cross the road, you take the decision to start crossing the road. 
  • How did we learn this skill? As a child we are trained by our families, by our schools and later we also learn ourselves through observation and experience. 
  • The machines are different. They do not have the power to observe and learn from others. Machines work on pre-programmed orders. You switch on the machine, the machine will start working and will keep doing work repetitively till we switch off the machine. Machines lack intelligence of its own. Machines cannot think like humans. 
  • But in 1950, English Mathematician Alan Turing wrote a landmark paper titled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" to talk about developing machines that could think. 
  • In 1956, a conference of computer scientists was held at Dartmouth college, USA, under the leadership of John McCarthy, to work on creating intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. The term ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI)’ was first introduced here. 

Definition

  • Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to  a broad branch of computer science, focused on building smart machines, capable of performing tasks that usually require varying levels of human intelligence. 
  • It also refers to simulation of human intelligence in machines. Simulation means the approximately copying of any operation or process. 
  • Using AI technology machines can be programmed to think like humans and mimic their actions. 

Usage of Artificial Intelligence

Since the 1956 Dartmouth Conference, we have made much progress in the field of artificial intelligence and the technology is now increasingly being used. Some examples are - 

  1. Smartphone Personal Assistant - Using Google assistant through voice command, we can perform many tasks on our mobile.  
  2. Web search - After typing a few keywords, Google (our search engine) checks the entire internet to find the most relevant content. 
  3. Autonomous car - These cars do not require any driver. These are self driving cars.   

Advantages of Artificial Intelligence

  • Reduces human risk - Through the use of AI we can create machines to do dangerous tasks like in mining, fire-fighting. 
  • Reduced error - While performing any task, humans can make mistakes due to lack of concentration, fatigue etc but AI machines will perform all the tasks without any error.
  • Quick Decisions - AI machines can take decisions faster than any human and carry out actions quicker. For example, jarvis (Iron man)
  • Daily Application - Everyday applications such as Ok Google by Google, Apple’s SIRI, Windows Cortana are frequently used in our daily life, whether it is for searching a location or using maps, taking selfies, making a phone call, replying to emails etc.  Another example is autocorrect spellings options in mobile phones. 
  • New Inventions - AI is an emerging technology, powering many inventions in almost every field. This will help humans to solve many complex problems. For example, doctors can now predict breast cancer at earlier stages by using advanced AI based technologies. 
  • Helping in jobs that require repetition - In our daily life, we do many repetitive mundane work, such as sending a thank you email, verifying certain documents for errors.  Using artificial intelligence we can automate these mundane tasks.  
  • Medical Application: Nowadays, doctors assess patients and their health risks, with the help of artificial intelligence. The technology helps them in early detection of the diseases. For example, corona detection at the airport using AI 

Disadvantage of Artificial Intelligence

  • High Development Cost- AI technology is updating everyday. Its software and hardware parts need to be updated from time to time to meet the latest requirements. All this is very costly.
  • Increase in Unemployment - To reduce cost and to increase their profit margins, many industries are replacing human labour with AI enabled robots. This will lead to massive unemployment as all the low paying labour jobs will be taken over by machines in near future. For example, with the coming of autonomous cars, there will be no need to hire a driver. 
  • Negative impact on human body - Due to artificial intelligence, the use of human body movement in our daily life will become lesser. We will have appliances that can perform all our household work like cleaning etc. We will have smart homes that will require no intervention from humans and will perform all the tasks automatically.
  • Lack of emotions- Machines are much better to work efficiently but cannot replace human connection. To perform certain tasks, we need emotional intelligence which only human beings have.
  • Lacking in creativity - Machines are products of human intelligence. It  will work as per the algorithms. Machines can perform only those tasks for which they are designed. This is not the case with humans. We keep learning and improving ourselves through observations and experience. 


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