ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

All human beings are intelligent, but the level of intelligence varies. Intelligence is the power of learning, understanding and reasoning or mental ability. We had and has many intelligent people among us. In general, most of the scientists are considered to be intelligent. In other words all outstanding personalities receiving Nobel Prize every year are intelligent. So intelligence is essential to invent and discover. Everyone likes intelligent people.

Scientists collect data from experiments and interpret and extrapolate the results to arrive at a meaningful conclusion. It is always possible with a limited number of data. If the data collected are numerous it becomes difficult for human intelligence to interpret and draw conclusions. For example we all used to remember the multiplication tables. If we want to multiply a large number with another large number we find it difficult. So we use a calculator that is programmed to do multiplication. So we can say that a calculator is more intelligent than us.

As we handle very complex processes in the field of engineering, medicine, agriculture, politics, we need to go for either a super-human intelligence – that works up to a particular limit – or beyond human intelligence. Such intelligence has been invented by intelligent human beings few decades ago. It is called Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI refers to any computer program or system that can perform tasks that resembles acts of human intelligence. It is the super-human intelligence.

Using AI one can easily play the Chinese board game GO, that has 361 moves as compared to 20 possible moves of the game – Chess. Similarly AI is used for driverless cars, facial recognition, image analysis, and speech recognition. Also in health care AI is used to diagnose diseases. AI plays a role in genetic manipulation of micro and macro organisms. There are plenty of fields where AI can be applied for the benefit of human society.

Research in AI is in full swing in various countries. Among them the most important are the US and China. They are dumping huge sums of money in AI research projects. Technological companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, IBM and Apple in USA are already involved in using AI for various purposes. Similarly Chinese companies like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent are equally competing with the US companies. India is slowly learning this wonderful technology to solve its own social, health and educational problems. The future is in the hands of AI.

This is one side of the story of AI. On the other side there are people who caution the persons who apply AI in various fields. AI may be beneficial to humans if it is used carefully. Careless usage of AI will harm the human society and may go the extent of annihilation of human race. AI has a big role to play in war. Weapons used in war can be operated through AI. There are terrorists in our planet. They can use AI for harming and hurting fellow humans. We cannot forget what Stephen Hawking said. “The development of full AI could spell the end of human race.” Therefore it is going to be a threat to human race itself. If we don’t steer carefully, we might end up driving off a cliff.

It is a wonder that the smart phones we all use is working with the help of AI. In other words we all are using AI day-in and day-out. Computer games, language translations, writing books, interpretation of complicated data-sets, solving difficult mathematical problems, recording of heart beat, ECG, blood sugar levels, steps and distance we walked and calories spent are some of the activities recorded by the smart phones using AI.

AI is connected to machine learning, algorithms, deep learning. In order to learn about AI one has to read articles written in various magazines, scientific journals and books. Some of these essays are very easy to understand. I made an attempt to understand AI and I am happy to know about AI’s enormous capability. Our future generation will certainly benefit from AI. - NARA