10 facts about artificial intelligence

ar·ti·fi·cial in·tel·li·gence — noun — The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.  

Artificial intelligence is one of those things that science fiction novelists and Hollywood movies have had some fun with. People often picture something along the lines of the Terminator movies and SKYNET. It seems every portrayal of artificial intelligence is usually one of a negative nature. Are the computers really trying to kill us?

Well, not exactly (not yet anyways). Though Artificial Intelligence gets a bad rap in the movies, the fact is we have yet to be actually threatened by a robot or computer. Here are ten facts about artificial intelligence to ease and educate your mind.

1.) A British mathematician by the name of Alan Turing is one of the founding fathers on theory and development of Artificial Intelligence. In the 1950’s he invented a test (aptly called the Turing Test) to prove if a machine exhibits artificial Intelligence. The test calls for a human evaluator to judge a natural language conversation with a machine. Based on questions the bot answers, the evaluator would determine if it exhibited behavior intelligent enough to be equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. 

2.) Fast forward to 1996 when IBM’s Deep Blue lost to Russian chess master Gary Kasparov (don’t feel bad though, as Deep Blue finally prevailed in 1997). Deep Blue was solely designed by IBM to beat Mr. Kasparov at his own game. I don’t know what seems crazier, the fact that a machine could calculate 200 million possible chess positions a second or that Gary Kasparov was capable of outwitting that machine.   

3.) The success of Deep Blue spawned IBM’s Watson super computer, which was specially designed to compete against Jeopardy’s all-time champions (which it beat). One of the challenges with Watson was programming it to understand questions in common language and answer them quickly. Today, Watson is enjoying a career in several industries, including most recently, helping people learn how to cook amazing recipes.  

4.) There are actually a few different types of artificial intelligence and one of them is called Expert Systems. This type of artificial intelligence is knowledge based and is designed to display and mimic aspects of intelligent behavior. Ultimately, the goal behind this type of A.I. is to imitate human capabilities of sensing and cognition. The video games millions of people enjoy on a daily basis employ this type of A.I.   

5.)  Video game A.I. is a bit one dimensional in that you have to visit a console and play a game to interact with it. Sony’s Aibo was one of the first “toys” you could buy and actually interact with. Aibo is a robotic dog that can explore, play and express both sadness and happiness. One of its unique traits was that it could even recognize its owner! For a modern and much more expensive version, check out Softbank’s Pepper humanoid robot.
 

6.) Autonomous vehicles are starting to become a mainstream topic in the news these days. This future of transportation relies on artificial intelligence to recognize and adapt to driving conditions and behavior. There are numerous governments in the US and Europe that have green lit patches of road to test these systems and validate them. That nap on the way home from work is closer than you think! 

7.) There is an artificial intelligence arms race heating up between social media companies. Facebook and Twitter are two companies using A.I. to match people to relevant content on their respective sites. Google has been one of the pioneers in perfecting the use of A.I. to pair people with what they are looking for.   

8.) There are many experts who are concerned by A.I., including Tesla founder Elon Musk — he just recently publicized his $10 million dollar investment in 37 research projects to make sure A.I. never gets the upper hand. 

Two other highly respected individuals that share those same feelings are Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking.   

9.) You might interact with artificial intelligence way more than you think. There are hundreds of millions of them out there. This includes personalized assistants on our cell phones like Siri and Cortana. We use them to find as movie times and a gas station nearby or weather forecasts. 

10.) Our future is undeniably intertwined with artificial intelligence, so where does it go from here? It is inevitable that it will surpass a human’s ability to do many things but most of those things will also improve how we live. The promise of something called Quantum Artificial Intelligence would harness A.I. for advanced cures in medicine or mapping even more of the universe. NASA has a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab that is currently working to formally assess the potential of these systems.