It is time again to help the non-technical users to understand some technology what usually seems very difficult to understand. I have written a few posts to assist our non-technical or let's say the technology challenged.

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What is Artificial Intelligence?

Well, as human beings we always want to build the best things that we can. And for some reason we want to build machines that thinks like us. We all have our own opinions if it is a good idea or not, but it is going to happen. There is no stopping it as we as the human race are chasing this dream. And we are chasing it hard. If you mentioned the word Artificial Intelligence just 10 years ago, it would probably have been laughed off or you would've referred to some or other sci-fi movie.

This has definitely changed as today, Artificial Intelligence is being researched and developed by most of the large information technology houses in the world. IBM has Watson, an AI platform aimed at the business market. Watson has already won the jeopardy programme when it played against two Jeopardy champions way back in 2011. It does not seem that long ago but in AI terms 4 or 5 years is very long ago. Microsoft has Cortana and Apple has Siri, who aims to learn our day to day personalities which will in the end assist us with our daily lives as it learns our personalities.

Even Google and Facebook has so many algorithms that attempts to learn our surfing patterns, to at the end enable them to target advertising to our needs.

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The branches of AI

AI is becoming so advanced that it has branched into two distinct practices. The first branch is what is called APPLIED AI, which uses specific principles to simulate human thought to do a very specific task. The second branch is labelled "GENERALISED AI", and in this case it tries to do develop specific machine intelligence which can perform any or many tasks.

All of this is being done to simulate the human thought process. A key aspect or input to Artificial Intelligence, is what is called Machine Learning, which I have written about a few months back. You can read the Machine Learning in Laymen's Terms post here. Machine Learning is such an integral part of Artificial Intelligence that some people are actually referring to Machine Learning when they are speaking about Artificial Intelligence.

This is however not the same thing. Machine learning is the basis tools that will be used to later create Artificial intelligence. Machine Learning is the underlying tech of the future AI. Instead of programming every line of instructions for a computer to perform specific tasks, Machine Learning will be used to program a computer, to learn our requirements by observing and learning what we do and require.

I really hope the In Laymen's Terms series will assist the non-technical users, to just know enough to have a conversation with the more technical people. Please try it. I can promise you if you speak to a generalist IT expert, and you mention that there is two branches in AI, most of them will not even know it :)

Sources for information of this post

Some of my other in Laymen's Terms Post.

Some of these posts have been written more than 10 Months ago :)

Blockchain and Digital Signatures - In Laymen's Terms
Trustless - What does it mean in laymen's terms?
Cyber Attacks explained in laymen's terms
Machine Learning - In laymen's terms
Internet of things and what it is in laymen's terms
Big data - What is it really about - In laymen’s terms

Happy Steeming!

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