We often stumble on the word “Artificial Intelligence” daily, be it in our favourite sci-fi movies or a problem solving based system. We hear of incredible breakthroughs achieved through the application of Artificial Intelligence in several fields and how it is transforming the world at large.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a whole game-changer. This moment reminds me of what I thought of AI the first time I heard the word, a robotic being with superhero power developed to be superior to humans. Well, this is far distant from the truth. This article is the first part of the AI starter articles written for absolute beginners in AI and those curious about this buzzword and how it works.

So if AI is not a robotic being with some extraordinary power, what is Artificial Intelligence then? Artificial Intelligence is the imitation of human intelligence, our intelligence, by machines so that they can perform tasks like us more effectively, efficiently with enhanced speed and precision. Interesting right? For us to have a full grasp of the actual functionality of AI, it’s imperative we must know and understand what makes us, humans, intelligent beings.
Now comes the highlight question in this article.

‘’What defines our intelligence as humans?’’

Our intelligence is based on how we learn, reason, solve problems, perceive and communicate with one another. These factors form the major components of intelligence. By imitating our intelligence, these machines acquire knowledge or skill through our experiences (data) we feed them (learning), detect patterns from these experiences (data) and use it to draw inferences (reasoning), use these inferences to perform a specific action which solves a problem (solve problems), analyze and interpret their environment by decomposing the scene into individual objects in various spatial relationship (perception) and communicate with us in our natural language (language).

Hold up! Even though our machines can learn, reason, perceive, solve problems and communicate, can they engage in generic reasoning, build on and optimize their existing knowledge to solve new problems, draw inferences relevant to the solution of a particular task or situation and recognize patterns without missing the major concept? Do they exactly understand the world?

Well, the answer is NO. These and many more questions will keep arising. Our existing AI system is not there yet but the progress so far is tremendous. The groundbreaking applications of AI in different sectors are discussed in one of the AI starter articles. There are still various ongoing researches in different aspects of Artificial Intelligence and we look forward to innovations, problem-solving solutions and more positive impact.

The next article in the AI starter articles is set to dismantle and simplify the types of Artificial Intelligence. So brace up and enjoy the ride!