A Brief Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
What is AI and how is it going to shape the future
By Dibbyo Saha, Undergraduate Student, Computer Science, Ryerson University
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Generally speaking, Artificial Intelligence is a computing concept that helps a
machine think and solve complex problems as we humans do with our intelligence.
For example, we perform a task, make mistakes and learn from our mistakes (At
least the wise ones of us do!). Likewise, an AI or Artificial Intelligence is supposed
to work on a problem, make some mistakes in solving the problem and learn from
the problems in a self-correcting manner as a part of its self-improvement. Or in
other words, think of this like playing a game of chess. Every bad move you make
reduces your chances of winning the game. So, every time you lose against your
friend, you try remembering the moves you made which you shouldn’t have and
apply that knowledge in your next game and so on. Eventually, you get better and
your precision, or in this case probability of winning or solving a problem
, improves by a noteworthy extent. AI is programmed to do something similar to
that!
Artificial Intelligence vs Traditional Robotics
Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash
When we hear the word “Robot”, an image of a metal box with creepy eyes and
speaking in a mechanical voice pops into our head. I mean that’s what we have
been watching in television for years, isn’t it? And to a certain degree we are right.
Traditional robotics has been perceived by pop culture as an arena that creates
humanlike machines to work for us as saviours and sometimes as super-villains
bringing in a cascade of tyranny into the human world. However, real life robots
aren’t as humanlike as we want them to be, yet. They are programmed in a specific
way to only execute tasks that it has been programmed to perform.
Imagine a self-driving car that has been designed to drive you on its own according
to where you instruct it to take you. Now for a traditional robot, the car is going to
go through the exact road that it was programmed to select for a certain destination
by its creators, possibly without the knowledge of traffic and cause accidents.
However, a human driver would have chosen the shortest path or check which
paths have the least traffic today and would be the most convenient path for that
particular destination. That is the exact humanlike creative thinking the traditional
robots lack! They are fixed in their own “not so smart” way and are largely
dependent on the program they are built on and the instructions that they are being
given. If a certain instruction doesn’t coincide with their program, the robot won’t
even be able to run, let alone going the extra step of being creative. This is the
limitation of traditional robots Artificial Intelligence is being developed to
overcome. Unlike the conventional “bips and bops”, a good AI will simulate the
What is AI and how is it going to shape the future
By Dibbyo Saha, Undergraduate Student, Computer Science, Ryerson University
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Generally speaking, Artificial Intelligence is a computing concept that helps a
machine think and solve complex problems as we humans do with our intelligence.
For example, we perform a task, make mistakes and learn from our mistakes (At
least the wise ones of us do!). Likewise, an AI or Artificial Intelligence is supposed
to work on a problem, make some mistakes in solving the problem and learn from
the problems in a self-correcting manner as a part of its self-improvement. Or in
other words, think of this like playing a game of chess. Every bad move you make
reduces your chances of winning the game. So, every time you lose against your
friend, you try remembering the moves you made which you shouldn’t have and
apply that knowledge in your next game and so on. Eventually, you get better and
your precision, or in this case probability of winning or solving a problem
, improves by a noteworthy extent. AI is programmed to do something similar to
that!
Artificial Intelligence vs Traditional Robotics
Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash
When we hear the word “Robot”, an image of a metal box with creepy eyes and
speaking in a mechanical voice pops into our head. I mean that’s what we have
been watching in television for years, isn’t it? And to a certain degree we are right.
Traditional robotics has been perceived by pop culture as an arena that creates
humanlike machines to work for us as saviours and sometimes as super-villains
bringing in a cascade of tyranny into the human world. However, real life robots
aren’t as humanlike as we want them to be, yet. They are programmed in a specific
way to only execute tasks that it has been programmed to perform.
Imagine a self-driving car that has been designed to drive you on its own according
to where you instruct it to take you. Now for a traditional robot, the car is going to
go through the exact road that it was programmed to select for a certain destination
by its creators, possibly without the knowledge of traffic and cause accidents.
However, a human driver would have chosen the shortest path or check which
paths have the least traffic today and would be the most convenient path for that
particular destination. That is the exact humanlike creative thinking the traditional
robots lack! They are fixed in their own “not so smart” way and are largely
dependent on the program they are built on and the instructions that they are being
given. If a certain instruction doesn’t coincide with their program, the robot won’t
even be able to run, let alone going the extra step of being creative. This is the
limitation of traditional robots Artificial Intelligence is being developed to
overcome. Unlike the conventional “bips and bops”, a good AI will simulate the
