Term of the Moment
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Redirected from: artificial intelligence
Definition: AI
(1) See Adobe Illustrator.
(2) (Artificial Intelligence) Devices and applications that exhibit human intelligence and behavior, including robots, self-driving cars, medical diagnosis and the ever-improving areas of voice, face and natural language recognition. Virtually every industry from finance to agriculture is exploring or using AI to improve operations and decision making. See AI in a nutshell and AI stages.
The Entire Field or One Application
The term AI may refer to the entire field of artificial intelligence or to one specific AI system. For example, "there is an AI to handle this."
Pattern Recognition and Predictions
Pattern recognition is a major part of AI. Systems are trained with huge amounts of data fed into a "neural network," which creates the AI that does the actual work, known as "inference." Neural networks differ dramatically from traditional business applications and their if-this-do-that program logic. It is extremely difficult, if not downright impossible, to debug or reverse engineer AI logic. See neural network.
Past and Present Buzzword
Although AI is a very hot topic today, the acid test of AI was actually defined in the 1940s by English scientist, Alan Turing, who said, "A machine has artificial intelligence when there is no discernible difference between the conversation generated by the machine and that of an intelligent person" (see Turing test). An ongoing competition for the best conversation chatbot started in 1991 (see Loebner Prize).
Will AI Eliminate Jobs?
Every year, there is more conversation about the androids in sci-fi movies becoming routine (see GPT and ChatGPT). Increasingly, AI robots are becoming helpers around the house, and people are concerned that AI is going to eliminate too many jobs. Estimates of the number of jobs lost in the future range from 300 million to one billion worldwide.
An Ironic Twist in Terminology
In the computer field, the term "intelligence" means processing capability. That means every computer-enabled device is intelligent, which includes billions of sensors, cameras, appliances and gadgets. However, "artificial" intelligence implies human capability. Thus, while all machines are "intelligent," the more they exhibit human traits, the more "artificial" they are. A coffee maker is intelligent but a robot has artificial intelligence. See AI in a nutshell, machine learning, edge AI, AGI, chatbot, social robot, AI anxiety and Watson.
Shakey the Robot
Forty-Four Years Later
The Cerebras AI Computer
(2) (Artificial Intelligence) Devices and applications that exhibit human intelligence and behavior, including robots, self-driving cars, medical diagnosis and the ever-improving areas of voice, face and natural language recognition. Virtually every industry from finance to agriculture is exploring or using AI to improve operations and decision making. See AI in a nutshell and AI stages.
The Entire Field or One Application
The term AI may refer to the entire field of artificial intelligence or to one specific AI system. For example, "there is an AI to handle this."
Pattern Recognition and Predictions
Pattern recognition is a major part of AI. Systems are trained with huge amounts of data fed into a "neural network," which creates the AI that does the actual work, known as "inference." Neural networks differ dramatically from traditional business applications and their if-this-do-that program logic. It is extremely difficult, if not downright impossible, to debug or reverse engineer AI logic. See neural network.
Past and Present Buzzword
Although AI is a very hot topic today, the acid test of AI was actually defined in the 1940s by English scientist, Alan Turing, who said, "A machine has artificial intelligence when there is no discernible difference between the conversation generated by the machine and that of an intelligent person" (see Turing test). An ongoing competition for the best conversation chatbot started in 1991 (see Loebner Prize).
Will AI Eliminate Jobs?
Every year, there is more conversation about the androids in sci-fi movies becoming routine (see GPT and ChatGPT). Increasingly, AI robots are becoming helpers around the house, and people are concerned that AI is going to eliminate too many jobs. Estimates of the number of jobs lost in the future range from 300 million to one billion worldwide.
An Ironic Twist in Terminology
In the computer field, the term "intelligence" means processing capability. That means every computer-enabled device is intelligent, which includes billions of sensors, cameras, appliances and gadgets. However, "artificial" intelligence implies human capability. Thus, while all machines are "intelligent," the more they exhibit human traits, the more "artificial" they are. A coffee maker is intelligent but a robot has artificial intelligence. See AI in a nutshell, machine learning, edge AI, AGI, chatbot, social robot, AI anxiety and Watson.
Developed in 1969 by the Stanford Research Institute, Shakey was the first fully mobile robot with artificial intelligence. Seven feet tall, Shakey was named after its rather unstable movements. (Image courtesy of The Computer History Museum.)
Funded by DARPA and made by Boston Dynamics, the 400-pound, 6'2" Atlas was designed for emergency rescue. Built in 2013, Atlas stumbled a bit in its first tests; however, teams of AI engineers taught Atlas to become very sophisticated. (Image courtesy of Boston Dynamics.)
Founder and chief architect of Cerebras Systems, Sean Lie is holding the wafer that is the heart of the Cerebras computer. Designed for AI processing, it contains 2.6 trillion transistors (see Cerebras AI computer). (Image courtesy of Cerebras Systems.)