What is AI?
Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. Examples of AI applications include expert systems, natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition and machine vision.
As the hype around AI has accelerated, vendors have scrambled to promote how their products and services incorporate it. Often, what they refer to as “AI” is a well-established technology such as machine learning.
AI requires specialized hardware and software for writing and training machine learning algorithms. No single programming language is used exclusively in AI, but Python, R, Java, C++ and Julia are all popular languages among AI developers.
How does AI work?
In general, AI systems work by ingesting large amounts of labeled training data, analyzing that data for correlations and patterns, and using these patterns to make predictions about future states.
Programming AI systems focuses on cognitive skills such as the following:
- Learning. This aspect of AI programming involves acquiring data and creating rules, known as algorithms, to transform it into actionable information. These algorithms provide computing devices with step-by-step instructions for completing specific tasks.
- Reasoning. This aspect involves choosing the right algorithm to reach a desired outcome.
- Self-correction. This aspect involves algorithms continuously learning and tuning themselves to provide the most accurate results possible.
- Creativity. This aspect uses neural networks, rule-based systems, statistical methods and other AI techniques to generate new images, text, music, ideas and so on.
Why is AI important?
AI is important for its potential to change how we live, work and play. It has been effectively used in business to automate tasks traditionally done by humans, including customer service, lead generation, fraud detection and quality control.
AI has become central to many of today’s largest and most successful companies, including Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and Meta, which use AI to improve their operations and outpace competitors. At Alphabet subsidiary Google, for example, AI is central to its eponymous search engine, and self-driving car company Waymo began as an Alphabet division. The Google Brain research lab also invented the transformer architecture that underpins recent NLP breakthroughs such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
