Unit 1 - Applications of AI
Lesson 1: What is AI?
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is the buzzword that is thrown around these days in article headlines. It’s in our phones, our cars, our workplaces, and even our homes. But what exactly is AI? At its heart, when news articles refer to AI it's about creating machines or systems that perform tasks requiring human-like intelligence and adaptability. These tasks include learning, reasoning, problem-solving, understanding language, and recognizing patterns. But let’s break it down further to understand the key concepts that define AI.
The Core Idea of AI
AI is not a single technology but a broad field of study aimed at building systems that can think and act seemingly sentiently. Unlike traditional software, which actions do not deviate from pre-programmed rules and structures, AI is designed to learn from data and adapt to new situations. This ability to learn and improve over time is what sets AI apart.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/24/amazon-alexa-recorded-conversation
For ex. when you ask a voice assistant like Siri or Alexa a question, it doesn’t just look up a pre-written answer. Instead, it uses AI to understand your words, figure out what you’re asking, and generate a response. This process involves several key concepts that form the foundation of AI.
Key Concepts in AI
1. Learning from Data
AI systems are trained on large amounts of information; what this looks like is AI systems being fed information (training data) to process and then learn from such to influence their future decisions. This is often referred to as machine learning, a subset of AI. For ex. an AI system trained on thousands of cat photos can learn to recognize a cat in a new image it has never seen before. (There are different methods of feeding training data).
2. Reasoning and Decision-Making
AI systems reason and choose their next path forward based on the data they’ve been fed. For ex. a spam filter in deciding whether an email is junk or as complex as a self-driving car navigating through traffic.
3. Adaptability
As aforementioned, unlike traditional software, which nay deviates from its set programming, AI systems can improve over time. For ex. a recommendation system like Netflix’s gets better at suggesting shows the more you watch.
4. Human-Like Interaction
AI enables machines to interact with humans in naturally. This includes understanding and generating human language (like chatbots), recognizing faces, interpreting emotions, and more. These capabilities are powered by subfields of AI like natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision.
Why AI Matters
AI is not just a buzzword, it’s the new wave of technology that’s reshaping industries and everyday life. It’s helping doctors diagnose diseases, enabling businesses to analyze copious amounts of data, and making our devices smarter, more intuitive, and adaptable to our personalized needs. At the same time, AI raises important questions concerning ethics, security, and the future of humans in the workforce, these are all concepts we will cover in the rest of this course!
AI is a fascinating and complex, but at its core, it’s about creating systems that adapt to be smarter and better at their specified uses. By understanding these key concepts, we can better appreciate how AI works and why it’s becoming the neoteric. Whether or not AI is coming for the better or worse, the age of AI is approaching and it's essential to learn about it.
