How far have we come with Artificial Intelligence?

A recent development of a deep learning model- has led to the detection of gravitational waves using signals has opened up new frontiers to artificial intelligence, and to look back at how far we have come from its inception.

Artificial intelligence-

Artificial intelligence was envisioned to make computers work as humans. The one quality that clearly distinguishes the humans from the inanimate objects is the ability to think without being programmed. Instinct, as it is called, all humans have that innate ability to work out solutions for problems, even without having a certain amount of prerequisite knowledge. No one knew, that the workshop organized by a mathematician in 1956, is going to have a whole new millennial gravitating towards it. The word Artificial intelligence is trite with deep learning and machine intelligence, that it has become inveterate for all, to state these as hobbies. But as all the other technologies, it started out as a simple agenda- “conjecture, in which all the aspects related to learning and the analysis of intelligence could be described or simulated by a computer’. The spear headers for the AI innovation were the software parsers and the expert systems. However, as sophisticated as it sounds, Artificial Intelligence has grown leaps and bounds to give real-time experiences to the users. The term has become a household name. The basic of artificial intelligence includes- programming the computers as humans. Striking analogies to the human anatomy, neural networks represent the brain of the system. Their functions are similar to that of the human brain. The sensors represent the biological nerve tips. The actuators represent the motor parts of the body.

Machine learning is the implementation of Artificial Intelligence. Similar to throwing a kid in the water to learn swimming, Machine learning, in essence, is analogous to the instinctive and passive learning performed by humans. Systems are programmed to cater a particular need, to the system answering and delivering solutions for non-programmed situations bridges the gap between computers and devices which ‘learn’.

Gravitational waves

Though the analogy may seem poor, consider the interaction between two oppositely charges particles, which are accelerating towards each other. This leads to the emanation of electromagnetic waves. Similarly, consider two masses accelerating with respect to each other, in space-time. Space-time is nothing but a four-dimensional entity- which has the fourth dimension attributed to time. When two bodies are moving at lightning speeds, strong gravitational waves are produced. The body can be equivalent to a stone and the space-time to the water where the stone is thrown. The bigger the stone, the stronger are the ripples. Cataclysmic phenomena, like a supernova, dashing of two black holes, lead to the generation of vigorous waves. When it propagates through space, it alters the shape and form of everything it comes across.

How does the current deep learning setup work to find the gravitational waves?

Not as simple as the electromagnetic waves, detection of the gravitational waves, is tiresome. The deep learning network is a conglomeration of a number of sister technologies used in medical diagnosis, image processing, etc. Minimal modifications resulted in brilliant results. Trained with 500,000 datasets, and tested using 200,000 data sets, the outcomes were exacting and satisfactory. The speed at which the AI system detects the wave is better than the provincial methods. This gives a new dimension to the astronomers and scientists to observe the phenomena in near real-time.

With this put into perspective, can we conveniently say that the Big Crunch in terms of computing and time analysis is nearing? It is time to put time into perspective and think about the drastic changes, which the AI technology can produce

1. Ability to detect the birth of a new star at the spur.

2. Remedial steps can be taken at times of catastrophic cosmic events.

3. Though this idea seems far-fetched, we can ride on the gravitational waves to guide ourselves towards the depths of the universe.