Artificial Intelligence: Why  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TUTORIAL  is the Best Thing  Since Sliced Bread
Published: 2020-04-06 07:06:38

It's a dumb world!

We all know how machines in our age do only their specific task. They are able to solve problems only for which they are built. Be it a simple calculator or music system, they all serve just their purpose. It is hard to believe but even our computer systems have very limited capability.



Doesn't this make them appear dump?

Well, Yes!

But in this course, we will try to understand what is helping our machines to become smarter.

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Meet Larmy!



Let's meet Larmy. Larmy is an alarm clock. A very simple machine we all use daily. But sometimes Larmy's owner is not happy with it. Do you know why? Well, nobody likes waking up early on a holiday. At least, we don't. Can you think of ways to make Larmy smarter?



Making Larmy smarter



You may have guessed it right by now, all we have to do is make Larmy stop ringing on a weekend. This will surely make it a smarter machine but do you think it won't face any issues in the future. What if a Holiday falls on a weekday?

What if one wants to go jagging early in the morning on a holiday? Larmy sure cannot handle such cases and will still be dumb device.


AI comes in handy
We already saw that human requirements from a machine keep changing from time to time. Machines are always expected to achieve more than their basic function. Just like human beings. Humans are capable of working in numerous professions. We are not programmed to perform just one task and this is possible because of our brain.

Be it either learning to ride a bicycle or play the guitar, our brain helps us in understanding and learning both the task. Artificial Intelligence (AI) was built with a similar idea. Making machines work just like a human brain.



Re-visiting Larmy
Larmy's job is not just ringing alarms at the correct time. It needs to understand and learn a lot more rather than just focus on its specific task. In order to do this, it should know when a particular holiday or a weekend is approaching. It should also know whether its owner likes to wake up early. Only then it can take a decision on when should an alarm go off.



AI in a nutshell
In very simple terms, AI is the ability to build computer systems that are capable of working like a human being. AI tries to copy a human being's method of learning and making its own decisions. Obviously, machines won't think in the same way as we do since we understand patterns and machines understand rules and data. This can get tricky at times.

Relax! They are obviously doing much better than this.


History of AI
It might be a little hard to believe but the field of AI is not a recent phenomenon. This term was first used in 1955 by John McCarthy in one of his articles. Over the years, major advancements kept happening and the world was introduced to ideas like talking machines capable of defeating legendary players like Gary Kasparov in Chess.

But we might also have the question as to why there was so much interest in AI from the very beginning.



Need of AI
Alan Turning(Father of Modern Computing) had described how a human brain's functioning can be represented by electrical wires. This increased the curiosity over, "Can machines think and behave like humans do?"



It could result in an unstoppable brain that can create expert systems as well as showcase intelligence. In order to create intelligence within machines, a lot of funding was provided to AI Projects which reaped benefits in a later stage.

As of today, we have fully-functional human robots like Sophia which can answer questions from fellow humans. Certainly, the field of AI has developed gradually over all these years.