Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. Specific applications of AI include expert systems, natural language processing, speech recognition and machine vision.
As the hype around AI has accelerated, vendors have been scrambling to promote how their products and services use it. Often, what they refer to as AI is simply a component of the technology, such as machine learning. AI requires a foundation of specialized hardware and software for writing and training machine learning algorithms. No single programming language is synonymous with AI, but Python, R, Java, C++ and Julia have features popular with AI developers.
In general, AI systems work by ingesting large amounts of labeled training data, analyzing the data for correlations and patterns, and using these patterns to make predictions about future states. In this way, a chatbot that is fed examples of text can learn to generate lifelike exchanges with people, or an image recognition tool can learn to identify and describe objects in images by reviewing millions of examples. New, rapidly improving generative AI techniques can create realistic text, images, music and other media.
AI, machine learning and deep learning are common terms in enterprise IT and sometimes used interchangeably, especially by companies in their marketing materials. But there are distinctions. The term AI, coined in the 1950s, refers to the simulation of human intelligence by machines. It covers an ever-changing set of capabilities as new technologies are developed. Technologies that come under the umbrella of AI include machine learning and deep learning.
Machine learning enables software applications to become more accurate at predicting outcomes without being explicitly programmed to do so. Machine learning algorithms use historical data as input to predict new output values. This approach became vastly more effective with the rise of large data sets to train on. Deep learning, a subset of machine learning, is based on our understanding of how the brain is structured. Deep learning's use of artificial neural network structure is the underpinning of recent advances in AI, including self-driving cars and ChatGPT.
AI is important for its potential to change how we live, work and play. It has been effectively used in business to automate tasks done by humans, including customer service work, lead generation, fraud detection and quality control. In a number of areas, AI can perform tasks much better than humans. Particularly when it comes to repetitive, detail-oriented tasks, such as analyzing large numbers of legal documents to ensure relevant fields are filled in properly, AI tools often complete jobs quickly and with relatively few errors. Because of the massive data sets it can process, AI can also give enterprises insights into their operations they might not have been aware of. The rapidly expanding population of generative AI tools will be important in fields ranging from education and marketing to product design.
Indeed, advances in AI techniques have not only helped fuel an explosion in efficiency, but opened the door to entirely new business opportunities for some larger enterprises. Prior to the current wave of AI, it would have been hard to imagine using computer software to connect riders to taxis, but Uber has become a Fortune 500 company by doing just that.
AI has become central to many of today's largest and most successful companies, including Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and Meta, where AI technologies are used to improve operations and outpace competitors. At Alphabet subsidiary Google, for example, AI is central to its search engine, Waymo's self-driving cars and Google Brain, which invented the transformer neural network architecture that underpins the recent breakthroughs in natural language processing.
Artificial neural networks and deep learning AI technologies are quickly evolving, primarily because AI can process large amounts of data much faster and make predictions more accurately than humanly possible.
While the huge volume of data created on a daily basis would bury a human researcher, AI applications using machine learning can take that data and quickly turn it into actionable information. As of this writing, a primary disadvantage of AI is that it is expensive to process the large amounts of data AI programming requires. As AI techniques are incorporated into more products and services, organizations must also be attuned to AI's potential to create biased and discriminatory systems, intentionally or inadvertently.
Arend Hintze, an assistant professor of integrative biology and computer science and engineering at Michigan State University, explained that AI can be categorized into four types, beginning with the task-specific intelligent systems in wide use today and progressing to sentient systems, which do not yet exist. The categories are as follows.
Automation. When paired with AI technologies, automation tools can expand the volume and types of tasks performed. An example is robotic process automation (RPA), a type of software that automates repetitive, rules-based data processing tasks traditionally done by humans. When combined with machine learning and emerging AI tools, RPA can automate bigger portions of enterprise jobs, enabling RPA's tactical bots to pass along intelligence from AI and respond to process changes.
Machine learning. This is the science of getting a computer to act without programming. Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that, in very simple terms, can be thought of as the automation of predictive analytics. There are three types of machine learning algorithms:
Machine vision. This technology gives a machine the ability to see. Machine vision captures and analyzes visual information using a camera, analog-to-digital conversion and digital signal processing. It is often compared to human eyesight, but machine vision isn't bound by biology and can be programmed to see through walls, for example. It is used in a range of applications from signature identification to medical image analysis. Computer vision, which is focused on machine-based image processing, is often conflated with machine vision.
Natural language processing (NLP). This is the processing of human language by a computer program. One of the older and best-known examples of NLP is spam detection, which looks at the subject line and text of an email and decides if it's junk. Current approaches to NLP are based on machine learning. NLP tasks include text translation, sentiment analysis and speech recognition.
Robotics. This field of engineering focuses on the design and manufacturing of robots. Robots are often used to perform tasks that are difficult for humans to perform or perform consistently. For example, robots are used in car production assembly lines or by NASA to move large objects in space. Researchers also use machine learning to build robots that can interact in social settings.
Self-driving cars. Autonomous vehicles use a combination of computer vision, image recognition and deep learning to build automated skills to pilot a vehicle while staying in a given lane and avoiding unexpected obstructions, such as pedestrians.
Text, image and audio generation. Generative AI techniques, which create various types of media from text prompts, are being applied extensively across businesses to create a seemingly limitless range of content types from photorealistic art to email responses and screenplays.
AI in healthcare. The biggest bets are on improving patient outcomes and reducing costs. Companies are applying machine learning to make better and faster medical diagnoses than humans. One of the best-known healthcare technologies is IBM Watson. It understands natural language and can respond to questions asked of it. The system mines patient data and other available data sources to form a hypothesis, which it then presents with a confidence scoring schema. Other AI applications include using online virtual health assistants and chatbots to help patients and healthcare customers find medical information, schedule appointments, understand the billing process and complete other administrative processes. An array of AI technologies is also being used to predict, fight and understand pandemics such as COVID-19.
AI in business. Machine learning algorithms are being integrated into analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to uncover information on how to better serve customers. Chatbots have been incorporated into websites to provide immediate service to customers. The rapid advancement of generative AI technology such as ChatGPT is expected to have far-reaching consequences: eliminating jobs, revolutionizing product design and disrupting business models.
AI in education. AI can automate grading, giving educators more time for other tasks. It can assess students and adapt to their needs, helping them work at their own pace. AI tutors can provide additional support to students, ensuring they stay on track. The technology could also change where and how students learn, perhaps even replacing some teachers. As demonstrated by ChatGPT, Google Bard and other large language models, generative AI can help educators craft course work and other teaching materials and engage students in new ways. The advent of these tools also forces educators to rethink student homework and testing and revise policies on plagiarism.
AI in finance. AI in personal finance applications, such as Intuit Mint or TurboTax, is disrupting financial institutions. Applications such as these collect personal data and provide financial advice. Other programs, such as IBM Watson, have been applied to the process of buying a home. Today, artificial intelligence software performs much of the trading on Wall Street.
AI in law. The discovery process -- sifting through documents -- in law is often overwhelming for humans. Using AI to help automate the legal industry's labor-intensive processes is saving time and improving client service. Law firms use machine learning to describe data and predict outcomes, computer vision to classify and extract information from documents, and NLP to interpret requests for information.
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