Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has already received a lot of buzz in the past decade, but it continues to be one of the new technology trends because its notable effects on how we live, work, and play are only in the early stages. AI is already known for its superiority in image and speech recognition, navigation apps, smartphone personal assistants, ride-sharing apps and so much more. 

Experts look at artificial intelligence as a factor of production, which has the potential to introduce new sources of growth and change the way work is done across industries. According to the report, How AI Boosts Industry Profits and Innovations, AI is predicted to increase economic growth by an average of 1.7 percent across 16 industries by 2035. The report goes on to say that, by 2035, AI technologies could increase labor productivity by 40 percent or more, thereby doubling economic growth in 12 developed nations that continue to draw talented and experienced professionals to work in this domain.

A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence

Here’s a brief timeline of the past six decades of how AI evolved from its inception.

1956 - John McCarthy coined the term ‘artificial intelligence' and had the first AI conference.

1969 - Shakey was the first general-purpose mobile robot built. It is now able to do things with a purpose vs. just a list of instructions.

1997 - Supercomputer ‘Deep Blue’ was designed, and it defeated the world champion chess player in a match. It was a massive milestone for IBM to create this large computer.

2002 - The first commercially successful robotic vacuum cleaner was created. 

2005 - 2019 - Today, we have speech recognition, robotic process automation (RPA), a dancing robot, smart homes, and much more to come. 

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence is a method of making a computer, a computer-controlled robot, or software think intelligently like the human mind. AI is accomplished by studying the patte s of the human brain and by analyzing the cognitive process. The outcome of these studies develops intelligent software and systems. Researchers extend the goals of AI to the following:

1.   Logical Reasoning 

AI programs enable computers to perform sophisticated tasks. On February 10, 1996, IBM’s Deep Blue computer won a game of chess against a former world champion, Garry Kasparov.

2.   Knowledge Representation

Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language that was created to underpin the “new world” of computing exemplified by “human-computer symbiosis.”

3.   Planning and Navigation 

The process of enabling a computer to get from point A to point B. A prime example of this is Google’s self-driving Toyota Prius.

4.   Natural Language Processing 

Set up computers that can understand and process language.

5.   Perception 

Use computers to interact with the world through sight, hearing, touch, and smell.

6.   Emergent Intelligence 

Intelligence that is not explicitly programmed, but emerges from the rest of the specific AI features. The vision for this goal is to have machines exhibit emotional intelligence and moral reasoning.

Some of the tasks performed by AI-enabled devices include:

• Speech recognition 
• Object detection
• Solve problems and lea from the given data 
• Plan an approach for future tests to be done

Some of the more common commercial business uses of AI are:

1. Banking Fraud Detection 

From extensive data consisting of fraudulent and non-fraudulent transactions, the AI lea s to predict if a new transaction is fraudulent or not. 

2. Online Customer Support

AI is now automating most of the online customer support and voice messaging systems.

3. Cyber Security 

Using machine lea ing algorithms and ample sample data, AI can be used to detect anomalies and adapt and respond to threats. 

4. Virtual Assistants 

Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Google now use voice recognition to follow the user's commands. They collect information, interpret what is being asked, and supply the answer via fetched data. These virtual assistants gradually improve and personalize solutions based on user preferences.

5. Healthcare 

The primary aim of health-related AI applications is to analyze relationships between prevention or treatment techniques and patient outcomes.

 AI programs are applied to practices such as diagnosis processes, treatment protocol development, drug development, personalized medicine, and patient monitoring and care

 

The AI market will grow to a $190 billion industry by 2025 with global spending on cognitive and AI systems reaching over $57 billion in 2021.  With AI spreading its wings across sectors, new jobs will be created in development, programming, testing, support and maintenance, to name a few. On the other hand AI also offers some of the highest salaries today ranging from over $1,25,000 per year (machine lea ing engineer) to $145,000 per year (AI architect) - making it the top new technology trend you must watch out for!

Machine Lea ing the subset of AI, is also being deployed in all kinds of industries, creating a huge demand for skilled professionals. Forrester predicts AI, machine lea ing, and automation will create 9 percent of new U.S. jobs by 2025, jobs including robot monitoring professionals, data scientists, automation specialists, and content curators, making it another new technology trend you must keep in mind too!