Artificial Intelligence- the Next ‘Big’ Thing in Technology

Artificial Intelligence (AI) may seem like a sci-fi but AI machines can do some pretty amazing and impossible stuff which humans will never be able to. For instance, the intelligent personal assistant of Apple's Siri adapts to users' voices, individual searches, and preferences. Today, Artificial Intelligence is changing every aspect of technology. Nowadays, technology is not just about creating tools for practical purposes, it is much more advanced. AI is the latest example of it. From self-driving cars to playing chess, AI has outperformed humans in each and every task with its high tech new, time-tested tools. Companies are now making huge investments in AI to grow their businesses.

In 1956, John McCarthy, a computer science teacher at MIT introduced the concept of Artificial Intelligence. He defined AI as the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly growing worldwide and India is coming up with equally unique ideas to give a tough competition to its other developed counterparts. In order to stay in the market, it's mandatory for companies to stay updated in terms of technological progress.

AI Startups

Just as electricity brought a significant change in the world, today, AI is doing the same. AI has created its impact not only on technology sectors but it's traversing a path around other sectors such as retail, healthcare, manufacturing and so on. In fact, some AI startups are making their mark in all major sectors. Startups such as Arya.ai build and scale AI apps and models using neural networks. Founded by Vinay Kumar and Deekshith Marla, this company has made apps for insurance claim automation, banking and fraud classification and so on.

AI is Everywhere

AI influences our lives directly or indirectly. Though we may not be aware of it, AI is everywhere. For instance, when you open your mail, your emails get automatically sorted into social, public, private and so on. This classification of email is owing to the natural language processing algorithm which is all AI or when you type a query in the search box of the search engine, there are hundreds of possible recommendations related to that search. The system chooses the best possible website according to your search and the choice of keywords use and gives you the best websites related to your search. This is due to the page rank algorithm of AI.

AI Solves Every Problem?

Yes and no. this is same as using a knife to cut fruits but that same knife can be used to kill someone. In the same way, AI has its shares of pros and cons. For instance, AI can detect a thief from a number of suspects through facial recognition or scanning but it can't teach him why stealing is wrong. This means AI machines cannot act on their own. It's obvious that AI machines are capable of doing all the tasks which humans can do, but there are certain tasks which even humans can't do such as stopping natural calamities like hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunami, earthquake etc and hence these tasks cannot be insinuated in a machine as well.

Companies Leading the AI Revolution:

Google
Google has a separate division known as google.ai, dedicated solely to the research in artificial intelligence. One of its projects TensorFlow focuses on giving researchers a free cluster to perform machine learning research on their findings.

Microsoft
When Bill Gates founded Microsoft in 1991, he had a vision of computers surpassing the humans in every aspect. With this vision in mind, Microsoft has been funding AI areas since the last 25 years. Some of its ventures in AI include virtual assistant Cortana SDK, Chatbot Zo which allows users of Facebook or GroupMe to chat personally.

Shell
A non-technical company, the shell is using an AI virtual assistant to answer customer queries 24×7.

IBM
Watson, the famous AI computer of IBM which answers questions in natural language won the US quiz show jeopardy outperforming its human counterparts.

Facebook
Facebook is using AI to help blind people 'see' photos by using AI app which narrates them the description of every photo. Also, it is using AI to produce detailed maps and access to the internet across the globe.

Apple
Apple builds AI products without compromising the users' privacy. For instance, if a picture was taken from a certain location, Apple will introduce more pictures from other locations so that people will not know the exact location of the user. The company also acquired an AI start up, VoiceIQ for further development in Siri as well as allow users handle their certain functions via commands.

Despite all the amazing things AI machines can do, it's more exciting to see how AI develops in near future. Without any doubt, AI is going to be the biggest change in technology; the next 'big' revolution.