Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence has many definition but one of the best ones is offered by John McCarthy in a 2004 paper, " It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable."

The field of AI research has several goals that researchers want to reach in the future such as the creation of a full-functional AI that can function like a normal human being, make decisions independently and plan for the future. Even though we don’t realize it, what we humans do is very complicated as our brain does a lot of work behind each and every decision that we make but most of it is done subconsciously. To code all this inside a machine which doesn’t have a functioning brain is a herculean task in itself and it has to be taught about every minor thing such as what it is to live, how to decide between two things, etc.

AI can be broadly classified into 2 types:

1) Weak AI:

This is the type of AI which you usually see in your daily life such as voice assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, etc. Weak AI is also called Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) which basically means that it is designed for a narrow range of tasks like voice assistants only guide you or provide you information through the means of speaking but they aren’t able to accomplish physical tasks themselves. Hence, such AI nowhere near as sophisticated or complex as normal humans are.

2) Strong AI:

If you have seen movies like Terminator or RoboCop then the protagonists in those movies are an example of strong AI. This type of AI doesn’t exist yet and is only a concept which is talked about on paper because making something like an entire person, as I previously mentioned, is not a simple task and there are several risks associated with it as machines are not emotional like humans and they have to be specifically taught what is rational and what is not.

Conflicts between rational and emotional decisions are something we commonly encounter in daily life and whether a machine will be able to deal with sensitive situations is something that has been debated on for years as there are certain situations where an emotional approach would be better as opposed to just ‘doing what is right’.

Strong AI comprises of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). AGI is fundamentally making the AI function like a normal human and have similar senses while ASI will enable the AI to have superior brain functions as compared to us humans just like they show in movies such as calculating the probability of a person’s death in seconds or scanning a room for potential threats.

Artificial Intelligence has several branches such as Deep Learning and Machine Learning. I will create separate posts for both of them so be sure to check those out too.