What is AI ?
AI or Artificial Intelligence is a subset of Machine Learning, which was born in 1956 and the first recognized machine learning exercise, was a checkers playing program in 1959.
Classical computing follows set rules and information, but machine learning 'learns' from information given to it and from its information environment. This is called training.
Built on high level programming languages like Python, the 'thinking' structure mimics the human brain's neural networks. AI programs can now be accessed through natural language and are now multimodal - understanding and generating text, audio, images, video, 3D and intent.
When fed an image ( below) , AI understands what it is seeing. AI understands that these are people. Given the instruction or prompt like " make the people walk across the road" AI makes a video (below) and makes the people walk.
Image
AI Video
Hallucinations
If you look at the end of the video above, you will see a child on a bike, pop up from the road. This type of 'error' or hallucination is still a problem with AI. Other types of 'hallucinations are people with six fingers, 3 arms or outright falsehoods i.e. text answers to questions that are totally made up.
The Future
AI will enter every human field and using AI will be just like having a helper or agent that you will work and play with. But it's a two edged sword. Life saving drugs that were designed by AI are now in clinical trials, but AI killer drones and robots are already near deployment in the battlefield, giving politicians a greener light to wage war, without the political backlash of human casualties.
We can't uninvent the wheel, we can't uninvent AI - lets hope that the good far out ways the bad.