AI in our everyday lives

AI is present in our lives, but what is AI? What is this thing called artificial intelligence? We may have heard the concept “artificial intelligence” many times on television, on social networks, in the newspaper... But, we do not know what exactly it is: an intelligence that machines have? Does it make them intelligent? Are machines going to dominate the world thanks to this intelligence? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Artificial intelligence is present in our lives and will be key in the coming years in economic, political and social progress. Therefore, here we are going to see a simple and understandable definition and characterization of Artificial Intelligence, also called AI, and its different typologies.

Brief conceptualization

If we consult several press or academic articles, we get the feeling that there is no homogeneous definition. What we usually understand is that if we talk about Artificial Intelligence we talk about how a machine reproduces human cognitive functions, as if these machines knew how the human brain works. It is developed from algorithms and is trained with observable data, which can be public and found, for example, on the Internet or can be private, produced by a company.

On the other hand, the definition offered by the European Union (EU) “Artificial intelligence (AI) applies to systems that exhibit intelligent behavior, as they are capable of analyzing their environment and taking action – with a certain degree of autonomy – in order to achieve specific objectives” (COM/2018/237 final, Brussels, 25.4.2018). And although this definition may land us, as we saw in another artículo, we should not worry if we do not fully understand it, the definition itself is confusing.

However, we cannot forget how it came about. 1956 and Dartmouth, where a workshop was organized that brought together great thinkers in neural networks, automata theory and the study of intelligence, from which the discipline of artificial intelligence would emerge. The protagonists of this event were Allen Newell, Herbert Simon, Marvin Minsky, Arthur Samuel and John McCarthy. Later will come the great confrontations between machines and chess players. In the 1970s, Terry Winograd developed a program that interrogated and gave commands to a robot that moved within a world of blocks. Starting in the 2000s, IBM and its supercomputers will enter, and currently we must not lose sight of the developments of OpenAI.

But, we must not forget the oldest origins that we can trace of Artificial Intelligence. We can trace its origins to Aristotle and Ctesibius of Alexandria. Since, the first proposed a series of rules that would guide our mind to reach rational conclusions; and the second, he built one of the first rationally self-controlled machines, but this did not have reasoning as such.

Different categories of AI

In other articles we have already mentioned some issues about the categorization of AI and its different levels of risk. But here, to better understand what artificial intelligence is, we have to take into account the following categories in which AI can be classified, according to Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig:

1. Systems that think like humans. They try to emulate our thinking and its processes.
2. Systems that act like humans. It tries to emulate our actions and behavior, such as robotics.
3. Systems that think rationally. Try to emulate our logical-rational thinking that would make the previous two points possible.
4. Systems that act rationally.  It tries to emulate rational human behavior, which could be understood as an understanding and union of the three previous points.

In addition, we must also keep in mind the differentiation between conventional and computational artificial intelligence. While the first is known as a symbolic-deductive AI, the other is known as a subsymbolic-deductive AI. Deductive symbolic AI It is based on a deductive mode of operation, as its name indicates; It is based on a formal and statistical analysis, from which the solution to a certain problem is chosen. It can self-regulate and enjoys autonomy. While subsymbolic-deductive AI, which is based on interactive development or learning, which is based on empirical data.

To reflect

We cannot help but overlook that there is still no explicit and clear definition of what Artificial Intelligence is. In fact, currently, instead of talking about AI, we talk about Machine learning or Deep learning. Although, the latest advances in AI seek the Reasoning Learning, we not only want them to "know" but also to be able to relate concepts to each other, that is, they try to emulate human "reasoning." Curious right?

Some of the fields where artificial intelligence has the greatest application is in games, medicine, transportation, customer service, medicine, finance, industry and, of course, computing. However, in the following years we will surely find it in places as diverse as a restaurant, the store next to our house or in the city hall office of our city.

Therefore, if you want to know more about AI and learn what Machine Learning is, take a look at our website to start training in Artificial Intelligence.

References

Management (11/11/2018) What is artificial intelligence and what is it for? Recovered from: https://gestion.pe/tecnologia/inteligencia-artificial-historia-origen-funciona-aplicaciones-categorias-tipos-riesgos-nnda-nnlt-249002-noticia/

López Takeyas, B. (2007) Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. Technological Institute of Nuevo Laredo. Recovered from: http://itnuevolaredo.edu.mx/takeyas/Articulos/Inteligencia%20Artificial/ARTICULO%20Introduccion%20a%20la%20Inteligencia%20Artificial.pdf

Singh, A. (09/08/2021) Deep Reasoning: Is this the Next Era of AI? Recovered from: https://medium.com/@reachtoanamikasingh19/deep-reasoning-is-this-the-next-era-of-ai-4b61b076db27

EU (02/19/2020) Report on the security and liability implications of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and robotics Document. Recovered from: Report on the Security and Civil Liability Impacts of Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things and Robotics

Written by

Elena del Castillo

Saturdays.AI

Saturdays.AI is an impact-focused organization on a mission to empower diverse individuals to learn Artificial Intelligence in a collaborative and project-based way, beyond the conventional path of traditional education