What comes to mind when you read or hear the term Artificial Intelligence?
For a lot of people, their minds go to a sci-fi scene with humanoid robots whose intelligence surpasses that of the programmers and engineers who constructed them, and then the robots make a league and a nation of their own and drive the human race to extinction!
Okay, let’s tone it down.
AI is already among us, and it is not what you imagine or see in Sci-Fi movies. Well, not yet…
What is artificial intelligence?
What is artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence can also be called machine intelligence, and basically, it is just the computer’s ability to think and learn and do things that an intelligent human being can do.
Artificial Intelligence involves the theory and development of computers being able to do things that require human intelligence.
Modern day examples of AI include virtual assistants like, Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Bixby, which exhibit the characteristics of AI, namely, speech recognition, translation, visual perception, problem-solving and decision-making.
There are different types of AI classified depending on how closely they resemble human ability to think and learn and feel.
Hope you’re not thinking this is far-fetched? If you are, allow me to change your mind. Here are some everyday examples of Artificial Intelligence around us:
1. Netflix
Netflix uses artificial intelligence to recommend films and series that it predicts you will enjoy based on what you like, what you have watched in the past, and also based on what people in your location or vicinity have enjoyed. If you have a shared account, sometimes you will get recommendations based on what those sharing your account enjoyed, the ability of Netflix to do this, and so accurately, is down to AI. It analyses billions of records to do this, but the downside is that sometimes smaller movies go unnoticed and big-name movies are the ones recommended most often.
2. Jumia/Konga
Jumia, Konga, ASOS, and other online stores we know use algorithms to enable them predict what you want to buy, what sales they show you, and what you might be interested in purchasing based on your online behavior. These algorithms are ‘trained’ or ‘taught’ to give accurate predictions based on your online behavior. This is another aspect of Artificial Intelligence.
3. ‘Hey, Siri…’
Apple’s virtual assistant and other virtual assistants are an everyday application of AI. They help with things like scheduling an event, calling a contact, setting an alarm, finding an answer to your question, helping us find our way to a place, send a text, and so on. They are pseudo-intelligent digital PAs, and by way of machine learning they get smarter and more capable of predicting and ‘understanding’ our natural language.( Although Siri still can’t yet hear pidgin…)
4. Ride-Hailing Apps
Have you wondered how Uber or Bolt (Taxify) can match you with the nearest driver, or know how to not match you with a driver you have rated low in the past, or know how to detect wait time and detour routes if traffic is too bad? Well, all that is yet another everyday application of machine learning.
5. Google Maps
By using anonymized location data from smartphones to scrutinize the speed at which traffic is moving at any given time, Google Maps can easily tell us how long a journey will take and which routes have more traffic than others. This is yet another use of machine learning.
6. Social Media
When you upload a picture of you and other people, Facebook uses its AI technology that is able to recognize faces to detect which of your friends are in the picture and suggest friends to tag. Machine learning algorithms that mimic neural networks of the human brain power this facial recognition software.
Snapchat also uses facial recognition AI for lenses to recognize things like you sticking out your tongue with the puppy dog filter, or you raising your eyebrows to trigger a corresponding animation.
Instagram uses machine learning algorithms to suggest pictures and videos you might like to see depending on pictures and videos you have liked in the past. Do you watch a lot of Tech Reviews on Instagram? Then in your explore page you’re going to come across a lot of them. If you watch a lot of makeup tutorials. Then your explore page will show you a lot of those.
7. Agriculture
In agriculture, AI-enabled bots help farmers to find more effective ways to safeguard their crops from weeds. They can also help increase yield at harvest by harvesting crops at a larger volume and quicker than humans.
Today, breakthrough AI technology includes the AI Epidemiologist BlueDot that predicted that CoronaVirus would affect Wuhan, in China, and Google’s AI meteorology technology that speeds up weather forecast predictions.
Surely after reading all this you now realise that Artificial Intelligence is very much already among us and it isn’t the robotic takeover the Sci-Fi movies made it out to be.
Share your view of AI with us? When someone says Artificial Intelligence what comes to your mind?
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This is lovely! I learnt a lot! Well done! The article is funny but still educative.
Thank you! I’m so glad you enjoyed it!
Can you be more specific about the content of your article? After reading it, I still have some doubts. Hope you can help me.
Can you be more specific about the content of your article? After reading it, I still have some doubts. Hope you can help me.