Home ›› 14 Dec 2021 ›› Editorial
John McCarthy (1927-2011), an American computer scientist, coined the term ‘artificial intelligence.’ In fact, he was one of the founders of the discipline of Artificial Intelligence. McCarthy received the Turing Award for his contributions to artificial intelligence. He also received the Kyoto Prize and the United States National Medal of Science. In a 1979 McCarthy wrote: “Machines as simple as thermostats can be said to have beliefs, and having beliefs seems to be a characteristic of most machines capable of problem-solving performance.” An artificial intelligence’s objective may be a simple one. Its goal, for example, may be to win at tic-tac-toe (UK: noughts and crosses).On the other hand, its goal may be complex. An AI, for example, may perform actions mathematically similar to actions that got it rewards in the past. An AI’s goal may be defined or induced.
“If the AI is programmed for ‘reinforcement learning.’ goals can be implicitly induced by rewarding some types of behavior and punishing others.” Alternatively, an evolutionary system can induce goals by using a ‘fitness function’ to mutate and preferentially replicate high-scoring AI systems; this is similar to how animals evolved to innately desire certain goals such as finding food, or how dogs can be bred via artificial selection to possess desired traits.”Artificial intelligence has now become a major factor of business competitiveness said Tata Consultancy Services. The firm carried out a study involving 835 executives who worked in thirteen global industry sectors across the world. Eighty-four percent of the executives said they considered the use of artificial intelligence to be ‘essential.’ Half of the respondents said they saw AI as ‘transformative.’
Ananth Krishnan, Chief Technology Officer of Tata Consulting, said:
“As companies begin to gain a better understanding of AI’s application for business, they will realize the significant impact of this transformative force. This is reflected in our Global Trend Study, which shows that forward-thinking companies are beginning to make major AI investments.”Given the increasing digital disruption across every industry and the public sector, AI should become a key and integrated component of an organization’s strategy.”
Rapid advancements in AI have contributed to the growth of the automotive industry. Specifically, through the creation and continued development of self-driving cars.In 2016, there were more than thirty companies testing self-driving cars using artificial intelligence. Apple, Google, and Tesla, for example, have been using AI for several years. The artificial intelligence in self-driving vehicles learns how to brake safely, change lanes, and prevent collisions. It also learns how to navigate and use maps. Artificial Intelligence is Inteligence demonstrated by machine as opposed to natural intelligence displayed by animals including humans. Leading AI textbooks define the field as the study of "intelligent agents” any system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of achieving its goals. Some popular accounts use the term "artificial intelligence" to describe machines that mimic "cognitive" functions that humans associate with the human mind such as "learning" and "problem solving", however, this definition is rejected by major AI researchers. AI applications include advanced web search engines (Google) , recommendations (used by You Tube, Amazon and Netflix), understanding human speech (such as Siri and Alexa), Self Driving Cars (e.g., Tesla) and competing at the highest level in strategic games systems. As machines become increasingly capable, tasks considered to require "intelligence" are often removed from the definition of AI, a phenomenon known as the AI effect. For instance, optical character recognition is frequently excluded from things considered to be AI, having become a routine technology. Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in 1956, and in the years since has experienced several waves of optimism, followed by disappointment and the loss of funding (known as an "AI winter"), followed by new approaches, success and renewed funding. AI research has tried and discarded many different approaches since its founding, including simulating the brain, modelling human problem solving , formal logic , large database knowledge and imitating animal behavior. In the first decades of the 21st century, highly mathematical statistical machine learning has dominated the field, and this technique has proved highly successful, helping to solve many challenging problems throughout industry and academia
AI has gained popularity due to its successful deployment in applications that were once unthinkable —for instance, talking to Siri or Alexa to set up your calendar.
AI has the potential to accelerate global efforts to protect the environment and conserve resources by detecting energy emission reductions, CO2 removal, helping develop greener transportation networks, monitoring deforestation, and predicting extreme weather conditions. Below mentioned are examples of how AI provides means to tackle the most pressing environmental challenges.
Use of machine learning to optimize energy generation and demand in real-time; better grid systems with increased predictability and increased efficiency, and use of renewable energy. Smart sensors and meters can be deployed within buildings to collect data and monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing energy usage in buildings.
AI is already being used in smart transport eg: google maps and Waze, where Machine learning algorithms are used to optimize navigation; increase safety and provide information regarding traffic flows and congestion (e.g. Nexar).
When combined with satellite imagery, AI can detect changes in land use, vegetation, forest cover, and the fallout of natural disasters.
Invasive species can be monitored, identified and tracked using the technology above, identifying and tracking their presence, and eliminating them is all done using machine learning and computer vision. A company called Blue River Technology is using AI to detect the presence of invasive species and other biodiversity changes. Predictive software have been deployed to help anti-poaching units plan their patrol routes
AI is widely used by water scientists to project water usage in a particular geographical area and make weather forecasts to make informed policy decisions. AI along with satellite data can help to forecast weather, soil and subsurface water conditions and predict droughts.
Air purifiers with AI can record air quality and environmental data in real-time and adapt the filtration efficiency. AI-powered simulations can send warnings to people living in urban areas about the pollution levels of their areas. There are tools that can detect the pollution sources quickly and accurately.Using data from vehicles, radar sensors and cameras AI can help improve air pollution.
AI-powered predictive analytics along with drones, advanced sensor platforms and similar tools can monitor tremors, floods, windstorms, sea-level changes, and other possible natural hazards. This technology can help government and concerned agencies to take timely actions and the availability of such information in real-time with automated triggers can enable early evacuations when needed.
Various meteorological companies, tech companies like IBM, Palantir, and insurance companies are combining AI with traditional physics-based modelling methods to model the impact of extreme weather events on infrastructure and on their other systems to advise the disaster risk management strategies.
There are some disadvantages in using AI. The ability to create a machine that can simulate human intelligence is no small feat. It requires plenty of time and resources and can cost a huge deal of money. AI also needs to operate on the latest hardware and software to stay updated and meet the latest requirements, thus making it quite costly.
A big disadvantage of AI is that it cannot learn to think outside the box. AI is capable of learning over time with pre-fed data and past experiences, but cannot be creative in its approach. A classic example is the bot Quill who can write earning reports. These reports only contain data and facts already provided to the bot. Although it is impressive that a bot can write an article on its own, it lacks the human touch present in other Forbes articles.
Perhaps one of the biggest disadvantages of artificial intelligence is that AI is slowly replacing a number of repetitive tasks with bots. The reduction in the need for human interference has resulted in the death of many job opportunities. A simple example is the chatbot which is a big advantage to organizations, but a nightmare for employees. A study by McKinsey predicts that AI will replace at least 30 percent of human labour by 2030.
AI applications automate the majority of tedious and repetitive tasks. Since we do not have to memorize things or solve puzzles to get the job done, we tend to use our brains less and less. This addiction to AI can cause problems to future generations.
Ethics and morality are important human features that can be difficult to incorporate into an AI. The rapid progress of AI has raised a number of concerns that one day, AI will grow uncontrollably, and eventually wipe out humanity. This moment is referred to as the AI singularity.
The writer is MD and CEO of Community Bank. He can be contacted at masihul1811@gmail.com
