What Is Artificial Intelligence, and How Does It Affect Your Daily Life?
The future is here. Find out how artificial intelligence affects everything from your job to your health care to what you’re doing online right now.
Artificial intelligence, better known as AI, sounds like something out of a science-fiction movie. It brings to mind self-aware computers and human-like robots that walk among us. And while those things are part of the overarching artificial intelligence definition and may exist in the future, AI is already a big part of our everyday lives. So, what is artificial intelligence, exactly? It’s complicated, but every time you use Siri or Alexa, you’re using AI, and that’s just the beginning of its practical applications.
“The main benefit of AI is that it can bridge the gap between humans and technology,” says AI researcher Robb Wilson. “AI will allow everyone to communicate with computers the same ways they communicate with other humans: through speech and text. This can have the massive benefit of putting the problem-solving capabilities of powerful technology in everyone’s pocket.”
If you’re curious about AI, you’re not alone. In a recent Reader’s Digest survey, 23% of respondents said they were interested in learning more about it. It’s an important topic because the future of AI will shape everything from the internet to medical technology to our workplaces—for better and for worse. While AI will open up a whole new world with real robots helping in ways you probably never imagined, we’ll also have to contend with a changing job market, as well as unintended AI bias. We spoke to technology experts to break it all down. Here’s what you need to know.
What does artificial intelligence mean?
In a nutshell, artificial intelligence is simply a machine that can mimic a human’s learning, reasoning, perception, problem-solving and language usage. An AI computer is programmed to “think,” and this process hinges on programming that is called machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL).
With ML and DL, a computer is able to take what it has learned and build upon it with little to no human intervention. But there are a few key differences between the two. In machine learning, a computer can adapt to new situations without human intervention, like when Siri remembers your music preference and uses it to suggest new music. Deep learning, on the other hand, is a subset of machine learning inspired by the structure of the human brain, says Lou Bachenheimer, PhD, CTO of the Americas with SS&C Blue Prism, a global leader in intelligent automation. As you may have guessed, this helps it to “think” more like a person.
Essentially, machine learning uses parameters based on descriptions of data, whereas deep learning also uses data that it already knows. In a real-world application, deep learning might help a digital worker easily decipher and understand handwriting by learning a variety of writing patterns and comparing it with data about how letters should look. AI will also play a big role in the metaverse in the future.
The history of AI
In 1935, Alan Turing envisioned machines with memory that could scan that memory for information. That idea eventually spawned the first digital computers , and in 1950, Turing developed a method to assess whether a computer is intelligent. The Turing Test involves asking a number of questions and then determining if the person responding is a human or a computer. If the computer fools enough people, it is considered thinking or intelligent.
It wasn’t until 1955, however, that scientist John McCarthy coined the term “AI” while writing up a proposal for a summer research conference. McCarthy later became the founding director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which was responsible for the creation of LISP, the second-oldest programming language and the one primarily used for AI.
Today, we have all kinds of “thinking” computers and robots.
