The term artificial intelligence has been echoed more than ever for the last few years. Most people might know artificial intelligence or in short, an A.I., as a technology that can automate any work or task by simply entering a few commands and the computer will do everything on its own.
While it might be true that just recently, the existence of AI has gained a considerable amount of spotlight, this piece of technology has been with us for almost a century and in the next section we are going to talk about how it started and how it is today compared to when it was first invented.
What is Artificial Intelligence exactly?
Artificial intelligence or in short, AI, is a branch of computer science that involves the development of machines that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as speech recognition, decision-making, and language translation. The existence of AI has been inseparable from us in modern society.
To put it into perspective, when you find this article on a search engine, it is the AI who did the research to find the matching answer that satisfies your query.
How did this technology started?
The concept of AI can be traced back to the early 1940s when an American neurophysiologist and cybernetician, Warren Sturgis McCulloch, as well as a logician named Walter Pitts, successfully invented artificial neurons, a formal design of Turing complete which is a machine or a system that if given enough time and memory as well as proper instructions, can solve and answer any computational problems.
In 1949, one of the earliest stored-program computers was developed under the name Manchester Mark 1. The machine was programmed to search for Mersenne primes and was able to run without encountering any error for nine hours. This caught media attention at the time and the British press dubbed them “electronic brain” in their articles.
The Manchester Mark 1 was succeeded by Ferranti Mark 1. This machine technology was able to generate a medley of “God Save the King”, “Baa Baa Black Sheep”, and “In the Mood”. This machine was also used by Dr. Dietrich Prinz in 1951 wrote one of the earliest computer games in history, a chess-playing program albeit with plenty of limitations at the time such as the inability for the computer to execute castling, double pawn move, en passant capture, pawn promotion, and it was unable to put a distinct between checkmate and stalemate. The machine then was recognized as the first machine that can run AI programs.
As the years go by, further developments have been made such as the founding of a concept such as the Turing test to create a standard examination for AI to determine their ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.
Artificial Intelligence today.
Today, the technology of artificial intelligence is being applied to various sectors. From the most common usage such as speech and image recognition that is usually embedded in search engines, navigating roads with the help of GPS, up to the field of healthcare, where it was used to analyze medical data to diagnose diseases and develop treatment plans.
The business sector has also benefited from the existence of AI. Such as the implementation of AI in the online shopping industry where the AI technology uses its storage data to help determine a fitting product suggestion for its user base, increasing the chance of getting more sales.
The most recent development of AI technology is that it finally starts to poke around in the creative sector. While it is still in its early stage, the AI is now capable of generating images based on the prompt that was given by users, creating a copy of articles or scripts, and even writing some computer code as demonstrated by a YouTuber Tom Scott in his video titled “ I tried using AI. It scared me.”.
What’s next?
As with many other technologies, artificial intelligence will keep evolving as time passes on. The technology that almost a century ago was limited to solving simple mathematical problems and playing chess, as well as requiring a massive machine in order to execute them, can now be accessed by most people on their mobile devices and is far more advanced and has been applied to various other sectors.
The future of artificial intelligence will likely play a major role in determining how society looks like a few years from now and on a wider scale, especially in the field of work. The importance of technological literacy might also be needed the most than ever to adapt to the future.
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