So what is Artificial Intelligence anyway?

Artificial intelligence (Ai) received some significant exposure with Steven Spielberg’s movie “AI.” The movie is about a 13 year-old boy who in actuality, is a superhuman computer. With this amount of exposure to the AI field it is useful to explain what AI is, where AI is today and what some of the dilemmas that face the future of AI.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be defined as the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. This domain has been a field characterized by complex research in laboratory scale environments and only recently has been becoming a part of the landscape of technology in commercial applications.

There has been a lot of discussion concerning the philosophy of Artificial Intelligence and it’s future role in our small and getting smaller world. With the Internet and the PC becoming so commonplace, people are now asking the question “What next?

Artificial Intelligence is about to become a real force in our technological evolution. There has been so much development and change in technology over the last 10 years that it is hard to believe how far we have come but there is going to be another technical revolution going on…and it will be about AI.

Questions surrounding AI

There are fundamental questions about AI that over time will need to be addressed. Besides some of the challenging technical questions that are imposed on this field, there are also some ethical and moral dilemmas that cannot be ignored. Some of the these questions include:

1. To what extent will intelligent machines be a part of our lives?
2. Can machines be built to be self-aware?
3. Are we capable of modeling machines with such intelligence?
4. If so, how would we control it?
5. What are the major technological hurdles?

The Holy Grail of AI

The Holy Grail of AI is to create machines that can truly mimic the human brain in the way it thinks, responds and interacts. Whether or not this can truly happen is a subject of intense debate. But one thing is becoming very clear: The hardware is starting to catch up to us. If you take all of today’s computers and sum them together you will end up with the equivalent intellectual power of 1x1017x flops/sec, which is what one human brain is capable of processing. Sounds like us humans are in good shape from the perspective, right? Wrong. With computer power increasing exponentially and doubling every 18 months or so computers are catching up quickly. At the current rate, it will be approximately 2021 when computers will have the equivalent processing power of all humans on this planet combined!

Compelling AI Technologies Today

Whether or not AI will be taking over the world is something for futurists and ethicists to debate. In the meantime there are some fantastic applications of AI that are very interesting and powerful which will provide some better means for us to manage our daily lives at work and at play. Keep in mind that all of these are being done today in various levels of experimentation with varying degrees of success. Some of those technologies include:

• Your stock portfolio automatically modifies your market position and executes “smart” trades for you.
• Your car does your driving for you.
• Robots handle your housecleaning, yard work and cooking.
• Your groceries are automatically ordered based on preferences and patterns in purchasing.
• Your bills and deposits are automatically managed because computer systems have learned your payment schedule.
• 3rd Generation “smart” search engines that allow you to get your information with more precision to help manage the ever-growing web.
• Competitive intelligence is managed by smart AI agents the peruse the web to look for relevant information (new releases, prices, marketing strategies, etc.)
• Drug researchers can utilize the intelligence for intensive bio-computational modeling in relation to the enormous amount of data from the human genome project to help find cures in ways never thought of.

These are just a few of many AI applications that currently are or will be available to all of us in the near future.

AI Tools

What are some of the AI tools used to accomplish this smart automation? I have described these tools in a very simple non-technical fashion.

• Neural Network(s)

A Neural Network is an AI tool modeled by the way neurons in the human brain learns hence the name “neural”. Neural networks are designed to recognize patterns in data and predict an output from a given set of information. A classic example is the use of neural nets to predict what stocks are considered to be undervalued given all of the information about the stock at that moment in time (P/E Ratio, Historical Fluctuations, Sector Performance, etc). Neural networks need to be trained on the data before it can predict or learn. In this way, they “learn from example” similar to the way a child learns.

• Mobile Agent System(s)

A mobile agent is generally characterized by a piece of software that can go from one computer to another computer (or network) and perform some type of useful execution on the user’s behalf. You can set up agents to peruse the Internet to look for something useful. For instance, a shopping agent could be set up to find a certain line of clothing in a certain size with instructions to make a purchase for the individual once a certain price criteria was met. In the B2B marketplace, agents will be programmed to negotiate price with other agents to execute many transactions between suppliers and customers.

• Genetic Algorithms

A model of machine learning, which derives its behavior from a metaphor of some mechanisms of evolution in nature. This is done by modeling the way DNA morphs and adapts to varied environmental conditions within a certain population. The individuals in the population then go through a process of simulated "evolution".

• Fuzzy Logic

A variation of classic logic that has been extended to handle the concept of partial truth -- truth values between "completely true" and "completely false". Dr. Lotfi Zadeh of UC/Berkeley introduced it in the 1960's as a means to model the uncertainty of natural language.

Conclusion

The recent advances that we have made in Artificial Intelligence are going to become a part of all our lives in the near future. We can expect the technologies that were typically reserved for complex laboratory research to become a part of the technology that is integrated into our everyday lives. With computer processing power doubling every 18 months, we can only expect more sophisticated software to evolve. This lends itself to an interesting debate over what we may need to do to control and harness this technology. In the meantime, there is some tremendous AI tools that are being applied that can make our lives and jobs easier and more efficient.

Chris Moy is the CEO and Co-Founder of SpinningLogic, LLC, a high technology company specializing in custom Artificial Intelligence applications for business and industry.
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