We are flooded everyday with news and updates about artificial intelligence, or AI, and that may lead us to think that we already mastered it. The hollywood movies depict us on the brink of war with our metal-made inventions but for now as it seems we barely tapped the potential of AI. So we can rest assured, can we? What do you really know about AI?
AI and nature
There are many ways to briefly describe AI but probably the most iconic, simple and yeteffective way is by comparing it to nature.
Mother nature can provide us with the frame into which we can start understanding how artificial intelligence works. Take machine translation for example. Neural machine translation, as its name suggests, works by imiting the interaction of neurons in the human brain to exchange data and provide the best translation possible.
Many other examples fall into our “simplification”, like AIS for example, the artificial immune system inspired by the workings of immunology and immune functions applied to compure security.
AI and history
AI may have a longer history than you think. Its origins reach as far back as to the ’50s. The first research on a thinking machine stems right from the need to produce a machine able to translate properly. However, the overall research goal of artificial intelligence was to create technology that allows computers to function in an intelligent manner. Its pioneer, who coined the term “artificial intelligence” was computer scientist John McCarthy.
Daily AI
When some people hear AI they think of movie-like robots walking around the streets but they are wrong. We use AI more frequently than we think. May it be Google, Youtube, Google Maps, Netflix, you name it, you are interacting with AI. Ask yourselves this. How do you get all those recommendations about products, or your favourite song without even typing it, AI is your answer. After all, all these top leading tech companies themeselves produce these self-thinking softwares.
A long way to go
AI has made our life smarter and more effective but we are not even half way, not even close. Some experts say that in 20 years more or less we will have machines with human.like intelligence, but shall we? This is a redundant promise for those involved in machine translation. As mention earlier, the use of machine in relation to translation has a long history. Already decades ago experts have repeatedly stated that we are “close” to human level, it always proved to not be the case. You know what they say, the first steps are always the hardest, and perhaps this limitless technology is just at its “first steps”.
Those were just some clarification on this amazing technology which is soon to totally change our lives.
Thank you for your time, till next time.