Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is a technical and specialised computer science that aims to create intelligent machines. The 21st century has accelerated rapidly with artificial intelligence, sensor technology; automation and robotics, being only some examples of this massive phenomenon. It is estimated that A.I will replace up to 45% of jobs within the next 20 years. These A.I, robotics and automations are changing the way that we work, live and play. Some of the activities of artificial intelligence include speech recognition, learning, planning and problem solving. Biology, linguistics, mathematics, computer science and engineering are A.I’s contribution factors.
Artificial Intelligence in 2020
Cognitive Analytics: Machines that are able to build associates and learn from experience. Technology systems are to evolve hypothesis, codify instincts & experiences as well as draw conclusions.
Deep Learning: Processing of raw data, images, natural language and speech is now allowed via these new approaches, thus providing deeper insights.
Face reading machines: Micro facial expressions that build meaningful information on the emotional state of use can now be deciphered which improves human-computer interaction.
Parallel information: Parallel processing of vast amounts of data can be aided through chips custom designed for A.I applications.
Smarter gets refined: Boundaries will be pushed with advances in sensor, cloud and machine learning technology with regards to cars, infrastructure and just about everything.
Who was the first person to create Artificial Intelligence?
The first person to create the first Artificial Intelligence, also known as the father of A.I, is John McCarthy. He organised a conference in 1956 called “The Dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence” with intention to draw out the expertise and talents of others that too were interested in Machine Intelligence. He believed that “every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it” In years to follow various A.I research centres began to form at both the Carnegie Mellon University as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Through this research the goals of AI were established as follows:
To create Expert Systems – systems that demonstrate, explain, advise its users and to exhibit intelligent behaviour.
To Implement Human Intelligence in machines – the creation of systems to understand, think, learn and behave like humans.
What are some of the known artificial intelligences on the market today?
Although A.I might seem like science fiction, most of us are already making use of it. Some A.I’s that you are using on a daily basis are as follows:
Video Games – Video characters that learn our behaviours and respond to stimuli and react in unpredictable ways. The effectiveness of video games has increased rapidly over the past several decades.
Online Customer support – Rudimentary A.I are often at the other end of the line while customers are seeking support. Many people are chatting to bots and not a live person. These bots are able to extract knowledge and present information to customer when needed.
Smart Cars – Autopilot functions on smart cars emphases the advance technology and intelligence at work. It has been reported in Washington that an algorithm developed by Google could have the potential to for cars to self-drive through experience, much like humans do.
Smart Home Devices – Smart home devices have the ability to learn our behaviour patterns as well as save us money by adjusting the settings on appliances or thermostats in effort to save energy and increase convenience. Default or preference settings are available on lights, TV’s or cooking appliance to allow for adjustments.
Security Surveillance – Computers have been trained to monitor cameras. Security algorithms can take input from security cameras and establish if there are any threats, which then alert human security officers.
Grading & Assessments - Plagiarism checkers is a popular tool for instructors to establish if writing content is directly copied. Algorithms are able to predict with 87% accuracy when source codes have been plagiarized. Robot-readers are used to score and identify grades for essays which are generally very labour intensive.
Social Networking – When uploading photos on Facebook, faces are highlighted and detected as a suggested friend. Pinterest uses a computer vision whereby computers are able to automatically detect and identify objects in images and recommended visually similar pins/images. Instagram is able to create and auto suggests emoji’s and hash tags. Snapchat has the capability for filters to track facial movements and allow animated effects and digital masks to be used.
Online Shopping – Search engines allow key words to analyse and produce the most relevant product to match your search. Recommendations pick up on products you have shown interest in and market a product to you. This is done via artificial neutral networks.
What are the benefits of having artificial intelligence in our current systems?
An A.I specialist was asked to provide an expert testimony in a major meeting held in April under the CCW where statements by nations and non-governmental organizations were heard. Some counties pressed for an immediate ban. Germany stated it “will not accept that the decision over life and death is taken solely by autonomous system”. A report on civil law rules on robotics was presented by Roberto Viola at The European Parliament Legal Affairs Committee recently. Roberto stated “In the Commission, we have long recognised the importance and potential of robotics and artificial intelligence and the need for significant investment in this area. For this reason, we have set up SPARC, the Public-Private Partnership for robotics in Europe, to develop a robotics strategy for Europe” The European Parliament consultation address how to best face the challenges of ethical, economic, legal and social aspects of the A.I developments. Artificial intelligence is beneficial for many obvious and supported reasons. Advances in A.I with regards to personalized learning gives teachers a better understanding of how their students learn. Machine translation allows the language gap to be bridged by modern science’s translation apps. Our GPS systems allow us to cut through the complexity of millions of routes to find the beset one to take. Our smart phones understand our speech. Google is advancing and now has capability to understand our intentions. A.I techniques are playing a massive role in medicine and science. A.I algorithms are helping to find needles in massive data haystacks and helping physicians understand high risk complications for patients. A.I methods have recently been employed to discover subtle interactions between different medicines that could potentially put a patient at risk for serious side effects.
What countries and governments are current using Artificial Intelligence?
1675 companies across 70 counties with a total of $13 billion in funding have been tracked. Japan comes in at number one with 310,508 operations robots. According to BAML (Bank of America Merill Lynch) a hotel in Nagasaki, Japan has a hotel staffed almost entirely by robots. Coming in second place is the US with 168, 623 operational robots. Germany comes in third with 161, 988 operational robots. The number of global industrial robots has grown 72% in the past 10 years, while 16% of US manufacturing jobs have fallen. It is projected that “ by 2020, about million jobs will be lost and 2 million gained (5 million net loss) in 15 major developed and emerging economics as a result of developments in genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics and other technological change," the BAML team added. See below map representing which counties have the highest number of operational robots:
Las Vegas Health department have used an A.I software program to analyse tens of thousands of tweets in order to identify possible food poisonings. By reading unstructured data, words and phrases this program was able to quickly calculate possible health problems. This is an exciting advance in cognitive computing where experts and state CIOs see this as the next big thing in government technology. The Director of the Canter of Data Innovation – Daniel Castro says “A.I. is about making better, more informed decisions, and automating those decisions.” He goes on to say “When it’s used in the right way, A.I. has the potential to make government substantially more efficient and citizen-friendly." A series of workshops have been held at The White House of Science and Technology policy to explore how A.I could be further be used in law enforcement. Castro also that A.I robotics such as self-driving vehicles could be a big opportunity for governments. The city of Columbus, which just won the U.S Department of Transportation’s $50 Million smart city challenge, plans to use autonomous vehicles to provide transport to a neighbourhood where unemployment is three times the city average to nearby job centres. There is a still a long way to go before A.I becomes a commonplace in government.
Below are the world ranking 13 smartest artificial intelligence companies:
Baudi: Also known as China’s Google based in Beijing is working on speech recognition intelligence called Deep speech 2. Headquarters are in Beijing.
Tesla: Transformation Transportation Company based in America uses AI to weave a practical map of the world in teal time. This reduces change of accidents on autopilot by 50%. Headquarters are located in California.
Alphabet: Californian Holding Company for Google family of firms. Hosts voice driven searches in Google using its language processing system. Headquarters are located in California.
NVidia: “AI on a chip” that supports virtual reality programs, self-driving and more independent drones to react to the world real time. Headquarters are located in California.
Enlitic: Uses A.I to spot health problems on x rays. This system is more accurate and faster than human experts for detecting problems such as lung cancer. Headquarters are located in California.
Didi Chuxing: Won its battle with Uber china by acquiring it. Their transportation efficiency system generates 70 terabytes of data a day from 14 million rides. Headquarters are located in Beijing.
Microsoft: Infusing A.I into everything they deliver across computing platforms. Microsoft formed a 5000 person business unit dedicated to A.I across multiple businesses. Headquarters are located in Washington.
Faunch: Industrial robot leader uses A.I to teach robots to learn skills independently. It takes one of their robots 8 hours to learn a new task. Headquarters are located in Japan.
Bosch: German manufacturing giants see A.I as its path to future growth. With learning based machines that predict maintenance and self-monitor. Headquarters are based in Germany.
Improbable: Operating system using A.I and deep learning to simulate reality. This creates an IOS where you can write the rules of your reality and set them in action. Headquarters are located in London.
What are the advantages versus disadvantages of artificial intelligence?
Error Reduction: A.I helps in reducing errors and allows for a greater degree of precision and accuracy.
Difficult Exploration: A.I and robots can be put to use in fuel exploration processes and mining. They can also be used for exploring the ocean floor which overcomes human limitations. This allows for more of laborious and hard work to be performed as machines do not wear out easily
Daily Application: Automated reasoning, learning and perception have become a common phenomenon in our everyday lives with computer method. Machine intelligence such as GPS, Smart phones, Fraud detectors, etc. are common A.I that we use.
Digital Assistants: “Avatars” are digital assistants who can interact with users saving on the need for human resources. These artificial thinkers think rationally and not emotionally allowing for no distractions. Emotions cloud judgements and effect humane efficient due to emotions which with machine intelligence is completely ruled out.
Repetitive Jobs: Monotonous and repetitive jobs can be carried out with machine intelligence. Machines think faster than humans and are able to multitask more efficiently. Machine intelligence can also be used to carry out dangerous tasks as their parameters can be adjusted.
Disadvantages:
Cost: It requires a huge cost to create an artificial intelligence machine as they are very complex. The repair and maintenance require massive costs. Their software programming need constant upgrades to cater for the needs of the environmental changes.
No replication of humans: Ethical arguments have been raised as to whether human intelligent is to be replicated or not. It is believed that intelligence is a gift of nature. Machines perform a task without making a right or wrong judgement based on emotions and values.
No improvement with experience: Artificial intelligence can’t improve with experience. Working with a whole heart of passion does not exist with machine intelligence.
No original creativity: There is no imagination or creativity with machine intelligence. They can help create and design but are not able to apply the power of thinking that the human brain has, therefore is a lack of creativity. Intuitive abilities that are inherent in the human brain cannot be replicated in machine intelligence
Unemployment: Extensive use of artificial intelligence can lead to unemployment which is a socially undesirable phenomenon. If people have nothing to do, this can lead to destructive use of their creative minds and create havoc. There is a fear of machines taking over humans and placing a huge threat on mankind.
What are the accelerators of this development?
The acceleration of artificial intelligence has gone from something joked about to something people are now devoting their lives to. A.I accelerator is an emerging class of microprocessors designed to accelerate the A.I neural networks. Rockstart founded in 2011 has become the leading accelerator in the Netherlands. They are known to be one of the major global start up programs that provide support and invest in startups helping them improve and grow faster. They are setting up their 4th acceleration program with a dedicated focus on A.I. The goal of the program is to accelerate the best starts up in the world that use A.I technology at their core to solve real world problems. Microsoft Accelerator has picked up 13 startups for its latest batch. Nine of the 13 start ups have received funding but the four remaining have just as much traction. The Microsoft Accelerator in Bangalore recently shifted its focus in the ecosystem. Some of their accelerators starts ups are the likes of: Whodat, Talview, Transaction Analysts, MoveInsynch and many more. Amazon has a new start up accelerator to advance conversational AI. Big tech companies have been creating many accelerators to enhance their brand and get developed involved in their efforts. Ed Tech companies are capitalizing on the transformative nature of A.I and the wider Asian education industry is now seen major growth through steady investment in the region. The education industry continues to harness the potential through A.I transforming the global education market.
How do Politian’s feel about artificial intelligence?
President Obama was eager to address artificial intelligence concerns such as the control of the technology, the risk of it taking over jobs and the concern of it being dangerous. He spoke to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) media lab director Joi Ito at the White House to sort through the hype, hope and fear around A.I. The conversation was centred on Artificial Intelligence between Scott Dadich and President Barak Obama:
“I want to centre our conversation on artificial intelligence, which has gone from science fiction to a reality that’s changing our lives. When was the moment you knew that the age of real AI was upon us?” - Scott Dadich
Obama: "My general observation is that it has been seeping into our lives in all sorts of ways, and we just don’t notice; and part of the reason is because the way we think about AI is colored by popular culture. There’s a distinction, which is probably familiar to a lot of your readers, between generalized AI and specialized AI. In science fiction, what you hear about is generalized AI, right? Computers start getting smarter than we are and eventually conclude that we’re not all that useful, and then either they’re drugging us to keep us fat and happy or we’re in the Matrix. My impression, based on talking to my top science advisers, is that we’re still a reasonably long way away from that. It’s worth thinking about because it stretches our imaginations and gets us thinking about the issues of choice and free will that actually do have some significant applications for specialized AI, which is about using algorithms and computers to figure out increasingly complex tasks. We’ve been seeing specialized AI in every aspect of our lives, from medicine and transportation to how electricity is distributed, and it promises to create a vastly more productive and efficient economy. If properly harnessed, it can generate enormous prosperity and opportunity. But it also has some downsides that we’re gonna have to figure out in terms of not eliminating jobs. It could increase inequality. It could suppress wages."
Angela Merkel said internet users have a right to know on what basis and how exactly they receive information via search engines. In a media conference Merkel said: “I’m of the opinion that algorithms must be made more transparent, so that one can inform oneself as an interested citizen about questions like ‘what influences my behaviour on the internet and that of others?”
“Algorithms, when they are not transparent, can lead to a distortion of our perception, they can shrink our expanse of information.” - Angela Merkel
Merkel along with others have highlighted the dangers of receiving information that is recommended by others or that confirms an existing opinion. So called filter bubbles and echo chambers which are the result of an internet search in which algorithm supposes the information about preference or location has raised an increasing concern. Merkel claims that robots have the same rights as humans. Angela Merkel alongside a few others in Europe are calling for a new law that would class robots as “electronic persons”. The European Parliaments Legal Affairs Committee have voted on their first ever report on robots. The report suggests artificial intelligence and robots are poised to “unleash a new industrial revolution, which is likely to leave no stratum of society untouched." Legislations propose that a kill switch on all creations will ensure orders given by humans.
President Xi Jinping called for innovation and breakthrough in science in 2014 at the opening ceremony of the 17th congress of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Later on, a series of national economic initiatives including the 13th five-year plan made in China, Robotics industry development plan, Made in China and three year guidance for internet plus artificial plan, all provided guidelines to boost A.I. A national engineering laboratory for the research and application of ‘deep learning’ was launched by China’s top economic planner – the National Development and Research Commission (NDRC). Exploding venture funding in A.I start-ups have been witnessed by the Chinese market. China is already a global leader in using A.I missiles and president Xi Jinping is overseeing a military program including aircraft carriers and development of stealth fighters. Jinping has made china’s army a priority to enable them to win in future wars. He said:
“We should put together economic and defence development, modernise the army to make it contemporary and standardised. We should comprehensively promote the military reform to create an army that will be disciplined and able to win.” - Xi Jinping
