Computer Science · Ch 3 — Emerging Trends
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial Intelligence is already woven into daily life, often without us noticing. Think of two familiar situations:
- The maps app on a smartphone guides you along the fastest route to your destination by analysing real-time data such as traffic congestion.
- When you upload a photo to a social networking site, the friends appearing in the photograph are recognised and tagged automatically.
Both are everyday applications of Artificial Intelligence. So are the intelligent digital personal assistants — Siri, Google Now, Cortana and Alexa — all of which are powered by AI.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the endeavour to simulate the natural intelligence of human beings in machines, so that the machines behave intelligently. An intelligent machine is expected to imitate some of the cognitive functions of humans, such as:
- Learning
- Decision-making
- Problem solving
How does an AI system make decisions?
The goal is to make machines perform tasks with minimum human intervention. To achieve this, AI systems are programmed to:
- Build a knowledge base — a store of information consisting of facts, assumptions and rules that the system can consult when deciding what to do.
- Make decisions based on that knowledge base.
- Learn from past experiences or outcomes — an AI system can use the results of earlier decisions to make better new decisions.
Key term — Knowledge base: a store of information consisting of facts, assumptions and rules which an AI system can use for decision making.
A memorable perspective on the field comes from computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra, whose quote opens this chapter: computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes — the machine is only the instrument; the real subject is intelligent computation itself.