AI or Artificial Intelligence was first introduced by Minskey and McCarthy, the founding fathers of artificial intelligence back in the 1950s. They described it as any task performed by a machine that, it would have been carried out by a human, would need to apply some intelligence to accomplish the task. This is a fairly broad definition and hence is widely debatable.

AI systems generally demonstrate the following human traits:

1. Planning
2. Learning
3. Reasoning
4. Problem Solving
5. Manipulation, etc.

Today, we are all surrounded by AI. From Siri to Amazon Alexa, we encounter and interact with AI regularly on a day to day basis.

The fourth industrial revolution is happening and we are witnessing it firsthand! This is not only exciting but is also giving us a glimpse of the future. 

We are witnessing the age of AI gradually picking up its pace and we are the ones who are taking us there.

In his book, “THE INEVITABLE”, Kevin Kelly explains why he is optimistic about machine learning. He says that almost every company these days is running or diverting towards the data business and they are going to need AI to civilize and consume big data and make sense and intelligence out of it- big data without AI will be a headache. 

Another breakthrough he is looking forward to is to be able to train the AI systems using extremely small data-sets. 

Currently, we need huge data sets to train the AI systems which takes up a lot of time and effort. This could mean a tremendous growth in efficiency working on big data problems. 

Some computations that take up to hours would require less time to generate the results. Though there are a few concerns about small data sets, as it can cause bias in the model predictions, for some cases, small data sets would work.

In the vision of Dr. Chieko Asakawa, AI is going to enable the blind people to “see” the world. 

Blind since the age of 14, Dr. Asakawa has dedicated her career to developing innovative technologies that will enable people with disabilities to interact with nature.

In her vision, thirty years from now, we can expect many disabilities to be augmented by AI. Imagine an AI-based cognitive assistant will supplement any of our senses. So we will be able to access the information even without having the ability to see or hear. 

The future ease of accessibility is going to be much better than that of today. 

Future AI will have the ability to respond to people’s problems with just using gestures, speech, or touch.  This is a huge step in providing equal opportunity to every individual.

Artificial Intelligence itself is a diverse subject and hence has diverse implications across industries. From financial services to the medical industry, AI will have a tremendous impact and perform cross-industry tasks with ease and efficiency. From using facial recognition as a tool to identify criminals in a crowd to identifying potential criminals using their background data, we are revolutionizing the way we are currently using AI.

Yoshua Bengio is one of the “founding fathers” of deep learning explains how AI will revolutionize the world of medicine. 

One of the most exciting parts he finds about deep learning principles is “unsupervised learning”, i.e., using deep learning principles in an unsupervised way, meaning without human guidance or labels on the data that is fed into the systems to train them.

Health Care Sector

In the medical field, AI will be used to decide patient-specific treatments and medicines using the genetic data of the patients. There is still a long road to cover, but eventually, we will get there.

Automobile Sector

Even in the automobile sector, many companies are working towards enabling their cars with technologies such as autonomous driving, robotic car sharing, driving assistance, recognizing the driving habits, and giving real-time alerts to warn drivers of possible dangers. For more on the automobile sector click here.

Other companies, such as LG, are working on a refrigerator which for example, on sensing that you are low on milk, orders it for you from Walmart, Amazon, or any other platform.

Human interaction is getting minimal and is making human lives easier and better. 

About the author:

Neelima Jauhari has completed MBA in Business Analytics, has worked as a Data Science Intern in a startup in Pune. A tech enthusiast, Kaggle 2X Expert and constantly looking to learn new skills.