Think your way to AI — Part one: Artificial Intelligence, simply put

Kirthika
Ascentic Technology
4 min readSep 9, 2022

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part of AI mechanism (source: Lena Vargas)

“A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human”

-Alan Turing

The quote above is by Alan Turing, defining Artificial intelligence(AI). Alan Turing is the famous godfather of computer science, who published a paper in 1950 which gave the kick start for the world to start believing in AI.

But wait, can I express AI in way more simple terms?

Yes, it is Making machines do what humans can or even more!

What does even AI do?

In this buzzing world, AI has spun up the world, bringing the fourth revolution in the industry. In a bubble of mind, we think, what's so great about it? It's enrapturing how one's curiosity is always hungry for answers.

Animation of Siri -source: Gleb Kuznetsov

Sometimes these answers are in front of us; we knowingly or unknowingly use them in everyday life. Look around yourself; AI surrounds us! For example, personalized automatic recommendations of movies on Netflix and recommendations of music on Spotify; google uses AI in search engines; your mobile device might also recognize the faces of your friends in your Gallery!

Apart from these commercial uses, it also plays a vital role in many sectors and research, e.g., predicting cancer, automation for administrative tasks, fraud detection, AI application in Manufacturing, bank security, etc.

There are tremendous tasks done with the help of AI. Humans use these applications more efficiently than before when we did programs with only hard coding and human resources.

How did AI come into existence?

In 1950, Alan Turing introduced the Imitation Game that came up with a question: "Can machines think?".

This proposal later turned into a Turing Test, which checks the ability of a machine able to think like a human. In 1995 John McCarthy coined the idea term called "AI." In 1961, the first industrial Robot came into the picture, which was used for welding car parts on an assembly line.

In 1964, the first Natural language processing(AI that deals with text data) program was developed. Following this, a computer scientist, Joseph Weizenbaum, created the first chat box and developed ELIZA!

ELIZA, the first chatbot conversing with a human (source: )

The first Robot, WABOT-1, which could converse, was developed in the 1970s in Japan. After these innovations, a series of robots were designed with extended features.

In the 1980s, the first promising autonomous self-driving car was introduced by Carnegie Mellon University's Navlab!

One of the most exciting Robots in 1997 was Deep Blue; it won a chess game over a reigning world champion. Sony built a robotic Pet dog named AIBO in 1999; it learns by interacting with its surroundings. Moreover, from the start of the 2000s, more advanced robot development was introduced.

Everything aside, we might wonder, when was this Siri introduced? It was in 2011, awakening the world with AI with daily use, followed by Alexa and Cortana in 2014.

In 2016, the first human Robot was built, named "Sophia." She acts like a human being with facial expressions, fascinating, isn't it?

Clip of a few robots interacting with humans 😍

In 2017, AI was said to be "THE NEW ELECTRICITY" by Andrew Ng, a computer scientist, co-founder, and head of Google Brain. from 2017 and Upwards, there has been a rapid increase in technologies and discoveries that intersect with AI. A few recent innovations are attached at the end of the article as food to our curiosity.

As we can see, the term "AI" is old! Its exponential growth in usage in recent years has made us think the term "AI" is a new arousing topic in society.

For more information about the History of AI :

Why do we think AI will keep on spreading its wings?

“Data! Data! Data!” he cried impatiently. “I can’t make bricks without clay.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

AI will continue creating innovations as long as it has Big Data to play its part. There is abundant data relating to a problem that needs to be solved. AI algorithms will calculate their way out to give reliable output for building solutions. As the data will keep growing over the years, it will be easier to utilize them to build the models that we can use for a more efficient work-life.

You are a few steps closer to getting to know AI better; Think your way to AI, follow up this series, awaiting to release of part two, and feed your curiosity.

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