Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence: The Game Changer in IT

Artificial Intelligence is one of the hot topics that IT industry is hovering around these days. We know what the word ‘Intelligence’ concerns about. It is the ability to perceive, understand, predict and manipulate to solve problems in a world far larger and complicated than the degree of knowledge that one possess. Have you ever thought what if machines acquire this human capability of intelligence and start performing human tasks which require intelligence?

The advancements in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Machine learning can make this distant dream a reality in the coming few years. From self-driving cars, to virtual assistants like Siri, Cortana and IBM’s Jeopardy defeating Watson, the science and engineering of creating intelligent machines or intelligent computer programs holds the potential to redefine the global IT world. The recent triumph of Google’s AI machine ‘Deep Mind’ over a human in one of the complex board games of ‘Go’ took the tech world into a surprise. This triumph of machine learning over the human intelligence sets apart more faith in the upcoming revolution in the AI world. As the relationship between humans and machines becomes more collaborative, and as machines gain intelligence to perform human tasks and routine activities without step by step guidance, we can say Artificial Intelligence hold the power to change the way we do things currently.

The tech world’s aspirations to make machines understand and emulate human brain capabilities dates back to centuries. It is even surprising to know that the historical roots of AI can be traced back to Greek Mythology. However, the term Artificial Intelligence or AI is coined by John McCarthy in 1956.

Artificial Intelligence Categories

AI is a broad topic which can be broken down into subcategories. The three main categories of AI includes:

• Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI): ANI is the weakest form of Artificial Intelligence. The machines with ANI capabilities can do a single task only. For example if the machine is intended to do chess game, it won’t be able to do anything else. ANI machines use a logic driven process to replicate human actions. It sifts through massive amounts of information and accurately extracts the relevant information. Many of the AI applications that we see currently are based on ANI.
• Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): AGI machines hold strong intelligence or match with human level intelligence. AGI machines can successfully perform any intelligent tasks that a human being can do. AGI can be applied contextually where it use cognitive capabilities to arrive at decisions like human beings. It can simulate human reasoning and can extend it capabilities to a broad range of circumstances. We are still in the early stages of implementing AGI for addressing many real world problems.
• Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI):ASI machines are much smarter and faster than the best human brains in every field that human beings excel. It is considered to be the greatest opportunity for human beings at the same time industry experts are concerning that whether it can become the greatest threat as well.

Applications of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence can play a key role in the sectors like healthcare, agriculture, personal care, home automation, banking and transportation. Currently, AI in its very basic form is influencing human life in the form of automated cars, virtual assistants, image recognition software, computer driven online conversations and so on. All these are instances of AI’s role in the betterment of human life. We can also see a lot of global interest among the technological advancements like Cognitive computing, Machine learning and Natural Language Processing. These are all small journeys to make machines smarter and self-adaptable compared to the old spoon fed, preprogrammed computing devices.

Future of Artificial Intelligence

Even though, today the role of AI is confined to specific narrow tasks and they don’t have adaptable intelligence that humans exhibit, the influence of AI is drastically growing. Research and Markets, a leading Market Research organization’s Artificial Intelligence Market – Global Forecast to 2020″ report states that “the artificial intelligence market is estimated to grow from USD 419.7 Million in 2014 to USD 5.05 Billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 53.65% from 2015 to 2020. AI holds the power to redefine the current work environment in IT enterprises especially the way Knowledge capital and people capital are deployed. As labor force adapts to the demands of a new technology revolution, it leads to economic prosperity as well. It brings in tremendous opportunities in enterprises to deploy knowledge and people towards value creation as opposed to process management. To tap this huge potential, technology companies in India and abroad have started offering Artificial Intelligence platform as a solution or as a service (AIaaS).With AI getting more mature, let us expect humans will get more empowered with self-learning machines that can create a smarter competition with the human brains and that will probably redefine the whole business ecosystem.