My article on Artificial Intelligence
I wrote this article for my college magazine. Just my views & thoughts mixed with facts!
Intelligence! A common trait all human beings possess naturally. Intelligence is what makes us humans. It makes us respond to feelings, answer questions, understand our surroundings, learn new subjects etc. Without intelligence, we can’t survive even a minute! Nope, everyone we know are intelligent! It’s just a matter of perspective! How we see/perceive intelligence. A math teacher may see intelligence as an ability of a student to solve math problems faster while a quiz master may see intelligence as an ability of a quizzer to answer questions! That is why there is a scale called IQ, or intelligent quotient for measuring the intelligence of humans, which is an arbitrary scale to indicate one’s intelligence level. A person with a higher IQ is believed to be smarter than a guy with a relatively smaller IQ value. Intelligence is all around us, even trees are & plants are intelligent! Their branches grow in the direction of sunlight while their roots go deep underground in search of water & nutrition. Nobody teaches it to do these, its embedded in their DNA, the code of life. Well if it’s a code, why can’t we replicate it& make intelligent robots? Yes, its possible to replicate DNA, but replicating without understanding is pointless. Understanding it is the difficult part, simply because of the sheer amount of data it contains. Terabytes & terabytes of data is contained in a single living cell. It’s nearly impossible to decode & understand the whole structure of DNA & its ‘hardcoded’ intelligence. I can’t say it’s impossible since a lot of researches are going on worldwide to unlock the secrets of the DNA & tomorrow someone somewhere may find a way to do things easier! If someone finds a way to understand how human beings develop intelligence, then it’ll eventually lead to the dawn of intelligent machines! Like in the movie iRobot(2004), robots will be doing all the ‘dirty’ work for us.
But, decoding the intelligence in DNA by nature is definitely going to take some while. But, its not the only way to create artificial intelligence. Ok, why make artificial intelligence if there is too much trouble even to understand it?! The answer is simple, we’re humans & we’re lazy! Like all the inventions out there, developments in artificial intelligence will make our lives even easier, safer & smarter! Smarter computers, smarter phones, smarter washing machines, smarter refrigerators, smarter cars, smarter homes, smarter everything! Everything that can respond to external stimuli & make changes to its operations maybe called as ‘smart’. For example, a smart washing machine; it can sense the amount of clothes you put inside, it may sense the amount of dirt in them & may control the amount of detergent & water for an optimum wash, without any user intervention.
The next way to develop AI without looking into the DNA is to use computers & our understanding about the human brain. Our brain is a complex computer, how complex? Well we can’t even measure its performance! But, one thing is for sure, our brain is the fastest super computer known to man, it’s simply a super complex learning machine, super intelligent &super-fast. By mimicking the human brain, it’s possible to develop AI. But again, the problem of little knowledge about the working of our brain was a real hurdle before! But now, our understanding about the brain has come long way since the last millennia. Now we know that our brain is a complex neural network, which is capable of evaluating input conditions & make decisions depending on the various outputs generated by each & every neuron present in the neural network responsible for the corresponding action. This understanding has made it even easier to develop AI.
Now, developments in AI are concentrated mainly on neural networks & genetic algorithms. Developments in AI has come a long way since the idea was born. Developments in computer technology has made it possible to develop complex programs with hundreds of thousands of code lines. Neural networks &genetic algorithms are the future of AI developments. The term artificial intelligence was first coined in 1956, at the Dartmouth conference, and since then Artificial Intelligence has expanded because of the theories and principles developed by its dedicated researchers. In the late 1950’s the very first AI was created by an American researcher Norbert Weiner, who concentrated on the theory of feedback. He developed a mechanism consisting of a thermostat & a temperature control system. The thermostat will acquire the temperature of the room, compare that against a reference temperature & makes adjustments to the temperature accordingly. It was a simple example of AI though it was a complex system at his time. In late 1955, Newell and Simon developed The Logic Theorist, which is considered to be the first AI program by many. It represented problems as tree structures & would go through the branches & will conclude at a solution that best suits the needs.John McCarthy is regarded as the father AI, considering his inputs to the field of AI.
Recent developments in AI are exciting &intriguing.Its now possible to develop robots that can walk on its own, cars that can drive themselves from point A to point B without causing any accidents, smart missiles that can track & take down moving targets, its even possible to create systems that can understand how a person speaks & replicate his voice & dialect. All the real AI systems today rely on artificial neural networks, which are copies of real neural networks in our brain. Neural networks are faster & relatively accurate in finding solutions to real world problems. The most interesting aspect of artificial neural networks is that, they can be trained. They can be trained to do a specific task. They can be trained to detect people from photographs, can be trained to detect patterns etc. This property of the artificial neural networks is what makes it so unique & futuristic.
Nowadays, AI can be found everywhere around us, the most common example is the software inside an ECU in a modern Car. It monitors the engine speed, current fuel consumption, throttle body position, oxygen in intake manifold & several other sensory inputs to determine the air-fuel ratio to be injected into the engine so that maximum performance is obtained. Similarly there are many examples out there around us. How many of us know that our very own Microsoft Windows operating system we have on our laptops/pc’s has a built in AI system hidden under the voice recognition feature? Currently, many systems are under development, which can speak/respond to human voice in a natural way. Many such systems exist today, you may have read in the news about a robot receptionist in japan which can help people. Its nearly impossible to notice that it is a robot. It looks & behaves exactly like a human receptionist. These kind of systems are becoming more & more popular these days & they’re becoming reliable also.
The future is of AI, it is going to make our lives much easier & our world a much safer place. Everything in future is gonna bear the tag ‘smart’ in the future.
More coming soon...