Artificial Intelligence
November 10, 2015
Foundations of Information Technology | ITS1101 S01

First off what is Artificial Intelligence? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.
With that being said, now take a minute and try to imagine a machine or machines that can think on its own. As a child growing up, I liked watching cartoons such as Transformers, Gobots and Astro Boy. As I got older I enjoyed watching movies like I-Robot, Terminator, and Chappie. I always thought to myself how fun it would be to have robots that could think for themselves. Over the last several decades, AI computing methods for automated perception, learning, understanding, and reasoning have become common in our lives. We plan trips using GPS systems that rely on AI to cut through the complexity of millions of routes to find the best one to take. Our smartphones understand our speech, and Siri, Cortana, and Google Now are getting better at understanding our intentions. AI algorithms detect faces as we take pictures with our phones and recognize the faces of individual people when we post those pictures to Facebook. Internet search engines, such as Google and Bing, rely on a fabric of AI subsystems. On any day, AI provides hundreds of millions of people with search results, traffic predictions, and recommendations about books and movies. AI translates among languages in real time and speeds up the operation of our laptops by guessing what we’ll do next. Several companies, such as Google, BMW, and Tesla, are working on cars that can drive themselves either with partial human oversight or entirely on their own.

Beyond the influences in our daily lives, AI techniques are playing a major role