2018

FEBRUARY

SPECIAL FOCUS

ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
Expertise provided by
Welcome To Our Special Feature On
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is not a new science. But it is
clearly a science that is accelerating fast, some might
argue faster than we can handle. In simple terms, AI refers
to the simulation of human intelligence by machines,
usually computers. In terms of practical applications, this
may mean computers using “intelligence” to solve
problems or interact with other machines or people.
It also involves computers using senses like sight and
sound to interpret the world around them.
Narrow AI refers to applications with a narrow or singular
purpose, like Apple’s Siri or Samsung’s Bixby, which are
designed as virtual personal assistants. Strong AI, also
known as True AI, refers to applications which have more
general intelligence and are able to solve unfamiliar,
undefined and unexpected problems.
Science fiction often presents us with the possibility of
self-aware AI that develops personality, feelings, desires
and beliefs. We are not there yet, but giant strides
towards this are being made – with AI applications
leading the charge in getting there with their own
self-improvement.
Coming back to reality, why did we decide to have a
special focus on AI? Clearly there is a lot of buzz around
the subject right now, with many IT vendors claiming
their solution is AI-driven. But as you will see from this
guide, the spectrum of what AI can mean extends from
a bot using pre-set answers to complex algorithms that
solve problems by genuinely learning from previous
“experience”. It is therefore appropriate that Fusionex has
given their input to this special focus issue because as a
multi award-winning, leading data technology provider
in the region specialising in Big Data Analytics (BDA),
Expertise provided by
Artificial Intelligence, and Deep Learning, they are at the
forefront of this exciting new frontier.
Understanding AI and being able to question what
vendors mean when they claim to be using it is critical.
Even more important is to understand just what AI might
mean for your own role or business in the near future.
When you consider that AI is already being used to
replace brokers on trading floors, write basic press
releases for news agencies, and diagnose illnesses with
similar success to general practitioners, then you must
also accept that AI will change business and our lives
forever.
We don’t expect that everything will change overnight.
Your immediate interest in AI may be for it to fill the gap
where your resources are stretched. As an example, if you
have a Narrow AI application that does network and
systems monitoring and learns as it does so, the
likelihood is it will become more effective than you at
preventing and diagnosing errors – thereby becoming
a great addition to your IT department’s team. At the
other extreme, if you work in manufacturing, you may
start looking at AI to enable robotic equipment to build
completely new products with no need to ever
reprogram them.
Many people live in fear that AI will make them irrelevant
or no longer needed. In our opinion, fear of AI is nothing
more than fear of the unknown. If you make it your
business to understand AI instead or hiding from it, then
AI won’t replace you. It will make you more successful
and effective than you ever thought possible. Our
message – Embrace AI and enjoy this special focus
e-book!
© Asia Online Publishing Group Sdn Bhd
Why Machine Learning Is A Vital Component
of Artificial Intelligence
It’s now impossible to escape the hype surrounding
artificial intelligence (AI). As computing power continues
to increase and more data becomes available while the
world shifts to a data driven era, we’re seeing artificial
intelligence evolve faster than ever before. Today, artificial
intelligence is on track to being applied to almost every
industry you can think of, and you might have heard the
term “machine learning” (ML) thrown around with it
almost interchangeably.
While the definitions of AI and ML are not concrete
(perhaps they won’t be for a long time to come), there is
a distinct difference between the two closely related
terms and knowing the difference is an important part of
understanding a crucial element that make up artificial
intelligence.
AI itself is a broad, multidisciplinary area. To put it simply,
the fundamental idea of artificial intelligence is to enable
computers, or machines, to think intelligently. How do
we humans think and make sense of the world? It is
through experience and learning from years and years of
“data” that we process in our every day lives. By the same
token, through machine learning, a computer can be
“trained” using tremendous amounts of data and
algorithms that give it the ability to learn how to perform
a particular task, adapt and improve from experience
without being explicitly programmed.
In that sense, machine learning is actually a subset of the
broad field of AI. It is an application of AI that is growing
rapidly and is already being used widely in many areas
of IT. For example, it is used by sites such as Amazon or
YouTube to provide options or recommendations to
users according to their previous searches; in healthcare,
Expertise provided by
patients can receive personalised treatment or
medication based on their health records and family
medical history; ML is also used in cyber security to
monitor network traffic and detect breaches more
effectively.
In a nutshell, machine learning works best at finding
patterns, dependencies and invariants in large quantities
of data, while artificial intelligence is a larger, more
complex entity that utilises the outcome of machine
learning. While the ultimate goal for artificial intelligence
is to create a machine that can mimic the human mind,
the main focus of machine learning is devising predictive
models and algorithms to extract knowledge from data
and learn from past experience. However, through recent
breakthroughs, machine learning has become a valuable
method of imparting knowledge into computers and this
is absolutely vital because knowledge is what enables
intelligence.
Whether you view AI in a negative or positive light,
whether you believe intelligent machines will replace us
or expand our cognitive abilities, for now there’s still a
long way before machines can achieve human-level
general intelligence or decision-making. What we can be
sure of is that artificial intelligence will have a profound
impact on our lives, our society and our future.
© Asia Online Publishing Group Sdn Bhd
The Future of Artificial Intelligence
How Artificial Intelligence has begun to change the way
we operate as human beings is already unfathomable.
From changing the light tones for ambiance in our
homes, to getting directions from the AI on our phones.
In fact, Google CEO has just placed the future of AI on a
pinnacle that says it all - calling AI a discovery more
important than fire or electricity. Closer to home, BDA
and AI company Fusionex, is already using AI to enable
Chatbot solutions for telecommunication providers that
are game changing for how we think about customer
service. In addition, Fusionex is also using AI for financial
services, video analytics in retail as well as AI in
manufacturing for preventive maintenance and image
analytics.
Numerous analysts and researchers are predicting
incredible rates of development in the AI space. We read
predictions that personal devices will know more about
an individual’s emotional state than his or her own family
through emotional artificial intelligence. Some are
predicting we will see this level of AI empathy within 5
years. It is also predicted that in the very near-term AI
powered wearables will have changed our lifestyles in
ways that could extend life expectancy possibly by as
much as by an average of six months. It’s a big claim
that’s difficult to ratify but what it does show is that AI
is a powerful disruptive force that could very well
reshape the way we interact with personal technologies.
Though there is still much confusion as to what AI is or
how AI actual works, the article in this compendium on
the difference between AI and Machine Learning, will
help unravel that.
Expertise provided by
The day to day activity that AI assists with, is well
documented. However, left alone to their own devices
and AI can resort to disruptive and even dangerous
activities as was seen when two Google home bots were
left to interact with each other. In our view the need for
human oversight will always remain an important aspect
of regulating your own AI implementations.
To quote Pichai, who sees great promise in the advent of
AI’s recent exponential development, “AI holds the
potential for some of the biggest advances we are goin
to see. You know whenever I see the news of a young
person dying of cancer, you realise AI is going to play a
role in solving that in the future, so I think we owe it to
make progress.”
To this effect, the AI, IBM Watson, has just been
incorporated into a number of hospitals in Malaysia to
help diagnose cancer and help in its curative process. It
is said to cut hundreds of man-hours in advising the best
course of action from its ability to search across the globe
for possible curative measures.
A number of companies, including the airline industry,
are shifting their call-centres to be fully operated by
chatbots with AI tech and the ability to emote and react
in human like ways. AI development enterprises are
mushrooming every where with the prospect of gearing
customers and clients towards full automation and better
service to end users.
You can expect to see personal technology device
vendors increasingly using readily available third-party AI
cloud services to enhance functionality and services.
© Asia Online Publishing Group Sdn Bhd
The missing component in today’s available AI, is its
ability to have empathy and apathy while interacting
with humans. This critical component is going to be what
makes or breaks the artificial intelligence future amongst
the human race. However, the boom of AI is already at
our doorstep.
There is no doubt that AI does pose a danger if taken
lightly and used irresponsibly, but isn’t that the same
for any other creation or discovery of man, from the fire,
Expertise provided by
to the wheel, to the internet? Clearly the power of AI to
change the world is real. Bringing that back to how it will
affect you and your business, the answer is that it is
impossible to predict. However what is totally predictable
is that AI will impact your business, whatever it is, as you
know it. As business or IT leaders you have a responsibility
right now to be investigating how your business will
implement and leverage AI.
© Asia Online Publishing Group Sdn Bhd
 A Brief History
and Progression
of AI
1940s

MIT’s Cynthia Breazeal

2000

2010
IBM Watson was
Invention of the develops Kismet, a robot introduced and trounced
programmable that could recognise and two former Jeopardy!
digital computer simulate emotions champions a year later

2011
1943

1997

Alan Turing introduces the Deep Blue

Turing Test in his paper, became the first computer
“Computing Machinery to beat a reigning world Apple introduces Siri
and Intelligence” chess champion

Warren McCulloch and

2014
1950

1986

Walter Pitts developed Google’s driverless car

The first driverless car
the first models of neural became the first to pass a
was built at Bundeswehr
networks U.S. state self-driving test
University

The world’s first full-scale

1951

1972

2016

Early development of intelligent humanoid

“Game AI”, which continues
to be used as a measure of
progress in AI
Google’s AlphaGo AI
robot, WABOT-1, was
beats the world’s best
completed by Waseda
human Go player
University

Based on Moore’s Law, Ray

The term “artificial
Kurzweil predicted that
2018
1956

1966

intelligence” was coined ELIZA

and AI research was
founded as an academic
discipline
machines with human-level
the first “chatterbot”,
intelligence will appear by 2029
was published
and AI will surpass human
intelligence by 2045

and
beyond

Expertise provided by © Asia Online Publishing Group Sdn Bhd

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INTELLIGENCE
Expertise provided by

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