Basic Questions

Q. What is artificial intelligence?

A. It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is
related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself
to methods that are biologically observable.

Q. Yes, but what is intelligence?

A. Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world. Varying kinds and degrees of
intelligence occur in people, many animals and some machines.

Q. Isn't there a solid definition of intelligence that doesn't depend on relating it to human intelligence?

A. Not yet. The problem is that we cannot yet characterize in general what kinds of computational procedures we
want to call intelligent. We understand some of the mechanisms of intelligence and not others.

Q. Is intelligence a single thing so that one can ask a yes or no question ``Is this machine intelligent or not?''?

A. No. Intelligence involves mechanisms, and AI research has discovered how to make computers carry out some of
them and not others. If doing a task requires only mechanisms that are well understood today, computer programs
can give very impressive performances on these tasks. Such programs should be considered ``somewhat intelligent''.

Q. Isn't AI about simulating human intelligence?

A. Sometimes but not always or even usually. On the one hand, we can learn something about how to make
machines solve problems by observing other people or just by observing our own methods. On the other hand, most
work in AI involves studying the problems the world presents to intelligence rather than studying people or animals.
AI researchers are free to use methods that are not observed in people or that involve much more computing than
people can do.

Q. What about IQ? Do computer programs have IQs?

A. No. IQ is based on the rates at which intelligence develops in children. It is the ratio of the age at which a child
normally makes a certain score to the child's age. The scale is extended to adults in a suitable way. IQ correlates well
with various measures of success or failure in life, but making computers that can score high on IQ tests would be
weakly correlated with their usefulness. For example, the ability of a child to repeat back a long sequence of digits
correlates well with other intellectual abilities, perhaps because it measures how much information the child can
compute with at once. However, ``digit span'' is trivial for even extremely limited computers.

However, some of the problems on IQ tests are useful challenges for AI.

Q. What about other comparisons between human and computer intelligence?

Arthur R. Jensen [Jen98], a leading researcher in human intelligence, suggests ``as a heuristic hypothesis'' that all
normal humans have the same intellectual mechanisms and that differences in intelligence are related to
``quantitative biochemical and physiological conditions''. I see them as speed, short term memory, and the ability to
form accurate and retrievable long term memories.
Whether or not Jensen is right about human intelligence, the situation in AI today is the reverse.

Computer programs have plenty of speed and memory but their abilities correspond to the intellectual mechanisms
that program designers understand well enough to put in programs. Some abilities that children normally don't
develop till they are teenagers may be in, and some abilities possessed by two year olds are still out. The matter is
further complicated by the fact that the cognitive sciences still have not succeeded in determining exactly what the
human abilities are. Very likely the organization of the intellectual mechanisms for AI can usefully be different from
that in people.

Whenever people do better than computers on some task or computers use a lot of computation to do as well as
people, this demonstrates that the program designers lack understanding of the intellectual mechanisms required to
do the task efficiently.

Q. When did AI research start?

A. After WWII, a number of people independently started to work on intelligent machines. The English
mathematician Alan Turing may have been the first. He gave a lecture on it in 1947. He also may have been the first
to decide that AI was best researched by programming computers rather than by building machines. By the late
1950s, there were many researchers on AI, and most of them were basing their work on programming computers.

Q. Does AI aim to put the human mind into the computer?

A. Some researchers say they have that objective, but maybe they are using the phrase metaphorically. The human
mind has a lot of peculiarities, and I'm not sure anyone is serious about imitating all of them.

Q. What is the Turing test?

A. Alan Turing's 1950 article Computing Machinery and Intelligence [Tur50] discussed conditions for considering a
machine to be intelligent. He argued that if the machine could successfully pretend to be human to a knowledgeable
observer then you certainly should consider it intelligent. This test would satisfy most people but not all
philosophers. The observer could interact with the machine and a human by teletype (to avoid requiring that the
machine imitate the appearance or voice of the person), and the human would try to persuade the observer that it was
human and the machine would try to fool the observer.

The Turing test is a one-sided test. A machine that passes the test should certainly be considered intelligent, but a
machine could still be considered intelligent without knowing enough about humans to imitate a human.

Daniel Dennett's book Brainchildren [Den98] has an excellent discussion of the Turing test and the various partial
Turing tests that have been implemented, i.e. with restrictions on the observer's knowledge of AI and the subject
matter of questioning. It turns out that some people are easily led into believing that a rather dumb program is
intelligent.

Q. Does AI aim at human-level intelligence?

A. Yes. The ultimate effort is to make computer programs that can solve problems and achieve goals in the world as
well as humans. However, many people involved in particular research areas are much less ambitious.

Q. How far is AI from reaching human-level intelligence? When will it happen?

A. A few people think that human-level intelligence can be achieved by writing large numbers of programs of the
kind people are now writing and assembling vast knowledge bases of facts in the languages now used for expressing
knowledge.

However, most AI researchers believe that new fundamental ideas are required, and therefore it cannot be predicted
when human-level intelligence will be achieved.

Q. Are computers the right kind of machine to be made intelligent?

A. Computers can be programmed to simulate any kind of machine.

Many researchers invented non-computer machines, hoping that they would be intelligent in different ways than the
computer programs could be. However, they usually simulate their invented machines on a computer and come to
doubt that the new machine is worth building. Because many billions of dollars that have been spent in making
computers faster and faster, another kind of machine would have to be very fast to perform better than a program on
a computer simulating the machine.

Q. Are computers fast enough to be intelligent?

A. Some people think much faster computers are required as well as new ideas. My own opinion is that the
computers of 30 years ago were fast enough if only we knew how to program them. Of course, quite apart from the
ambitions of AI researchers, computers will keep getting faster.

Q. What about parallel machines?

A. Machines with many processors are much faster than single processors can be. Parallelism itself presents no
advantages, and parallel machines are somewhat awkward to program. When extreme speed is required, it is
necessary to face this awkwardness.

Q. What about making a ``child machine'' that could improve by reading and by learning from experience?

A. This idea has been proposed many times, starting in the 1940s. Eventually, it will be made to work. However, AI
programs haven't yet reached the level of being able to learn much of what a child learns from physical experience.
Nor do present programs understand language well enough to learn much by reading.

Q. Might an AI system be able to bootstrap itself to higher and higher level intelligence by thinking about AI?

A. I think yes, but we aren't yet at a level of AI at which this process can begin.

Q. What about chess?

A. Alexander Kronrod, a Russian AI researcher, said ``Chess is the Drosophila of AI.'' He was making an analogy
with geneticists' use of that fruit fly to study inheritance. Playing chess requires certain intellectual mechanisms and
not others. Chess programs now play at grandmaster level, but they do it with limited intellectual mechanisms
compared to those used by a human chess player, substituting large amounts of computation for understanding. Once
we understand these mechanisms better, we can build human-level chess programs that do far less computation than
do present programs.
Unfortunately, the competitive and commercial aspects of making computers play chess have taken precedence over
using chess as a scientific domain. It is as if the geneticists after 1910 had organized fruit fly races and concentrated
their efforts on breeding fruit flies that could win these races.

Q. What about Go?

A. The Chinese and Japanese game of Go is also a board game in which the players take turns moving. Go exposes
the weakness of our present understanding of the intellectual mechanisms involved in human game
playing. Go programs are very bad players, in spite of considerable effort (not as much as for chess). The problem
seems to be that a position in Go has to be divided mentally into a collection of subpositions which are first analyzed
separately followed by an analysis of their interaction. Humans use this in chess also, but chess programs consider
the position as a whole. Chess programs compensate for the lack of this intellectual mechanism by doing thousands
or, in the case of Deep Blue, many millions of times as much computation.

Sooner or later, AI research will overcome this scandalous weakness.

Q. Don't some people say that AI is a bad idea?

A. The philosopher John Searle says that the idea of a non-biological machine being intelligent is incoherent. He
proposes the Chinese room argument www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/chinese.html The philosopher Hubert Dreyfus
says that AI is impossible. The computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum says the idea is obscene, anti-human and
immoral. Various people have said that since artificial intelligence hasn't reached human level by now, it must be
impossible. Still other people are disappointed that companies they invested in went bankrupt.

Q. Aren't computability theory and computational complexity the keys to AI? [Note to the layman and beginners in
computer science: These are quite technical branches of mathematical logic and computer science, and the answer to
the question has to be somewhat technical.]

A. No. These theories are relevant but don't address the fundamental problems of AI.

In the 1930s mathematical logicians, especially Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, established that there did not exist
algorithms that were guaranteed to solve all problems in certain important mathematical domains. Whether a
sentence of first order logic is a theorem is one example, and whether a polynomial equations in several variables has
integer solutions is another. Humans solve problems in these domains all the time, and this has been offered as an
argument (usually with some decorations) that computers are intrinsically incapable of doing what people do. Roger
Penrose claims this. However, people can't guarantee to solve arbitrary problems in these domains either. See
my Review of The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose. More essays and reviews defending AI research are in
[McC96a].

In the 1960s computer scientists, especially Steve Cook and Richard Karp developed the theory of NP-complete
problem domains. Problems in these domains are solvable, but seem to take time exponential in the size of the
problem. Which sentences of propositional calculus are satisfiable is a basic example of an NP-complete problem
domain. Humans often solve problems in NP-complete domains in times much shorter than is guaranteed by the
general algorithms, but can't solve them quickly in general.

What is important for AI is to have algorithms as capable as people at solving problems. The identification of
subdomains for which good algorithms exist is important, but a lot of AI problem solvers are not associated with
readily identified subdomains.
The theory of the difficulty of general classes of problems is called computational complexity. So far this theory
hasn't interacted with AI as much as might have been hoped. Success in problem solving by humans and by AI
programs seems to rely on properties of problems and problem solving methods that the neither the complexity
researchers nor the AI community have been able to identify precisely.

Algorithmic complexity theory as developed by Solomonoff, Kolmogorov and Chaitin (independently of one
another) is also relevant. It defines the complexity of a symbolic object as the length of the shortest program that will
generate it. Proving that a candidate program is the shortest or close to the shortest is an unsolvable problem, but
representing objects by short programs that generate them should sometimes be illuminating even when you can't
prove that the program is the shortest.

Applications of AI
Q. What are the applications of AI?

A. Here are some.

game playing
You can buy machines that can play master level chess for a few hundred dollars. There is some AI in them,
but they play well against people mainly through brute force computation--looking at hundreds of thousands
of positions. To beat a world champion by brute force and known reliable heuristics requires being able to
look at 200 million positions per second.
speech recognition
In the 1990s, computer speech recognition reached a practical level for limited purposes. Thus United
Airlines has replaced its keyboard tree for flight information by a system using speech recognition of flight
numbers and city names. It is quite convenient. On the the other hand, while it is possible to instruct some
computers using speech, most users have gone back to the keyboard and the mouse as still more convenient.
understanding natural language
Just getting a sequence of words into a computer is not enough. Parsing sentences is not enough either. The
computer has to be provided with an understanding of the domain the text is about, and this is presently
possible only for very limited domains.
computer vision
The world is composed of three-dimensional objects, but the inputs to the human eye and computers' TV
cameras are two dimensional. Some useful programs can work solely in two dimensions, but full computer
vision requires partial three-dimensional information that is not just a set of two-dimensional views. At
present there are only limited ways of representing three-dimensional information directly, and they are not
as good as what humans evidently use.
expert systems
A ``knowledge engineer'' interviews experts in a certain domain and tries to embody their knowledge in a
computer program for carrying out some task. How well this works depends on whether the intellectual
mechanisms required for the task are within the present state of AI. When this turned out not to be so, there
were many disappointing results. One of the first expert systems was MYCIN in 1974, which diagnosed
bacterial infections of the blood and suggested treatments. It did better than medical students or practicing
doctors, provided its limitations were observed. Namely, its ontology included bacteria, symptoms, and
treatments and did not include patients, doctors, hospitals, death, recovery, and events occurring in time. Its
interactions depended on a single patient being considered. Since the experts consulted by the knowledge
engineers knew about patients, doctors, death, recovery, etc., it is clear that the knowledge engineers forced
 what the experts told them into a predetermined framework. In the present state of AI, this has to be true.
The usefulness of current expert systems depends on their users having common sense.
heuristic classification
One of the most feasible kinds of expert system given the present knowledge of AI is to put some
information in one of a fixed set of categories using several sources of information. An example is advising
whether to accept a proposed credit card purchase. Information is available about the owner of the credit
card, his record of payment and also about the item he is buying and about the establishment from which he
is buying it (e.g., about whether there have been previous credit card frauds at this establishment).

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai/

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Definition - What does Artificial Intelligence (AI) mean?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines
that work and react like humans. Some of the activities computers with artificial intelligence are designed for
include:

 Speech recognition
 Learning
 Planning
 Problem solving

Techopedia explains Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that aims to create intelligent machines. It has become an
essential part of the technology industry.

Research associated with artificial intelligence is highly technical and specialized. The core problems of
artificial intelligence include programming computers for certain traits such as:

 Knowledge
 Reasoning
 Problem solving
 Perception
 Learning
 Planning
 Ability to manipulate and move objects
Knowledge engineering is a core part of AI research. Machines can often act and react like humans only if they
have abundant information relating to the world. Artificial intelligence must have access to objects, categories,
properties and relations between all of them to implement knowledge engineering. Initiating common sense,
reasoning and problem-solving power in machines is a difficult and tedious approach. 

Machine learning is another core part of AI. Learning without any kind of supervision requires an ability to
identify patterns in streams of inputs, whereas learning with adequate supervision involves classification and
numerical regressions. Classification determines the category an object belongs to and regression deals with
obtaining a set of numerical input or output examples, thereby discovering functions enabling the generation of
suitable outputs from respective inputs. Mathematical analysis of machine learning algorithms and their
performance is a well-defined branch of theoretical computer science often referred to as computational
learning theory. 

Machine perception deals with the capability to use sensory inputs to deduce the different aspects of the world,
while computer vision is the power to analyze visual inputs with few sub-problems such as facial, object and
speech recognition.

Robotics is also a major field related to AI. Robots require intelligence to handle tasks such as object
manipulation and navigation, along with sub-problems of localization, motion planning and mapping. 

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/190/artificial-intelligence-ai

What is artificial intelligence (AI), and what is the difference between

general AI and narrow AI?

There seems to be a lot of disagreement and confusion around artificial

intelligence right now.

We’re seeing ongoing discussion around evaluating AI systems with

the Turing Test, warnings that hyper-intelligent machines are going
to slaughter us and equally frightening, if less dire, warnings that AI and
robots are going to take all of our jobs.  

In parallel we have also seen the emergence of systems such as IBM

Watson,Google’s Deep Learning, and conversational assistants such as
Apple’s Siri, Google Now and Microsoft’s Cortana. Mixed into all this has
been crosstalk about whether building truly intelligent systems is even
possible.

A lot of noise.
 To get to the signal we need to understand the answer to a simple
question:  What is AI?

AI: A textbook definition

The starting point is easy.  Simply put, artificial intelligence is a sub-field of
computer science. Its goal is to enable the development of computers that
are able to do things normally done by people -- in particular, things
associated with people acting intelligently.

Stanford researcher John McCarthy coined the term in 1956 during what is

now called The Dartmouth Conference, where the core mission of the AI
field was defined.

If we start with this definition, any program can be considered AI if it does

something that we would normally think of as intelligent in humans.  How
the program does it is not the issue, just that is able to do it at all. That is, it
is AI if it is smart, but it doesn’t have to be smart like us.

Strong AI, weak AI and everything in between

It turns out that people have very different goals with regard to building AI
systems, and they tend to fall into three camps, based on how close the
machines they are building line up with how people work.

For some, the goal is to build systems that think exactly the same way that
people do. Others just want to get the job done and don’t care if the
computation has anything to do with human thought. And some are in-
between, using human reasoning as a model that can inform and inspire
but not as the final target for imitation.

The work aimed at genuinely simulating human reasoning tends to be

called “strong AI,” in that any result can be used to not only build systems
that think but also to explain how humans think as well. However, we have
yet to see a real model of strong AI or systems that are actual simulations
of human cognition, as this is a very difficult problem to solve. When that
time comes, the researchers involved will certainly pop some champagne,
toast the future and call it a day.

The work in the second camp, aimed at just getting systems to work, is
usually called “weak AI” in that while we might be able to build systems
that can behave like humans, the results will tell us nothing about how
humans think. One of the prime examples of this is IBM’s Deep Blue, a
system that was a master chess player, but certainly did not play in the
same way that humans do.

Somewhere in the middle of strong and weak AI is a third camp (the “in-
between”): systems that are informed or inspired by human reasoning.
This tends to be where most of the more powerful work is happening
 today. These systems use human reasoning as a guide, but they are not
driven by the goal to perfectly model it.

A good example of this is IBM Watson. Watson builds up evidence for the
answers it finds by looking at thousands of pieces of text that give it a level
of confidence in its conclusion. It combines the ability to recognize patterns
in text with the very different ability to weigh the evidence that matching
those patterns provides. Its development was guided by the observation
that people are able to come to conclusions without having hard and fast
rules and can, instead, build up collections of evidence. Just like people,
Watson is able to notice patterns in text that provide a little bit of evidence
and then add all that evidence up to get to an answer.

Likewise, Google’s work in Deep Learning has a similar feel in that it is

inspired by the actual structure of the brain. Informed by the behavior of
neurons, Deep Learning systems function by learning layers of
representations for tasks such as image and speech recognition. Not
exactly like the brain, but inspired by it.

The important takeaway here is that in order for a system to be considered

AI, it doesn’t have to work in the same way we do. It just needs to be
smart.

Narrow AI vs. general AI

There is another distinction to be made here -- the difference between AI
systems designed for specific tasks (often called “narrow AI”) and those
few systems that are designed for the ability to reason in general (referred
to as “general AI”). People sometimes get confused by this distinction, and
consequently, mistakenly interpret specific results in a specific area as
somehow scoping across all of intelligent behavior.  

Systems that can recommend things to you based on your past behavior

will be different from systems that can learn to recognize images from
examples, which will also be different from systems that can make
decisions based on the syntheses of evidence. They may all be examples
of narrow AI in practice, but may not be generalizable to address all of the
issues that an intelligent machine will have to deal with on its own. For
example, I may not want the system that is brilliant at figuring out where
the nearest gas station is to also perform my medical diagnostics.

The next step is to look at how these ideas play out in the different
capabilities we expect to see in intelligent systems and how they interact in
the emerging AI ecosystem of today. That is, what they do and how can
they play together. So stay tuned – there's more to come.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2906336/emerging-technology/what-is-artificial-
intelligence.html
 Artificial intelligence: Know its
purported benefits and risks
Some high-profile technologists claim that artificial intelligence
(AI) may destroy the human race. Should we be worried?
By Patrick Gray | January 5, 2015, 6:30 AM PST
 RSS

 Image: iStock/Linda Bucklin

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been on the radar of technology leaders for decades, and
while we don't yet have autonomous machines helping us make decisions or carry out
complex tasks, most enterprises have reaped some benefit from AI. From "intelligent"
networks that reroute packets in the event of a hardware or network failure to
advanced "rules engines" that do everything from estimate the risk of lending money
to routing aircraft to appropriate gates, machines are developing an increasing ability
to perform tasks that were once the domain of humans.

As AI advances, however, some of technology's big thinkers, includingStephen

Hawking and Elon Musk, are seeing more peril than progress, and IT leaders will be
expected to comment on the risks of AI, in addition to the purported benefits.

What's the danger of what we're creating?

Traditional computing has focused on performing mathematical calculations at
increasingly rapid speeds. Tasks like rendering the latest animated film or simulating
weather patterns are essentially massive math problems, and the current generation
of computers excels at performing the necessary calculations quickly. However,
computers are completely inept at tasks humans take for granted — an ability to learn
and modify behavior is one of those core tasks. Computers can beat us at chess, but
they can't tell us why they prefer a Picasso to a Monet.

Artificial intelligence research focuses on inventing an entirely new class of computers.

Rather than creating faster calculation machines, AI research is focused on machine
learning, with the ultimate goal being a computer that can interpret its environment and
modify itself to adapt to that environment; essentially, this computer would be able to
change itself based on knowledge it acquires, while retaining the ability to perform
massively complex calculations more rapidly.

A machine with these capabilities could quickly outpace the understanding of its
creators. With access to everything from the entirety of human wisdom via the internet
to connected financial markets and power grids, such a machine could acquire
knowledge, modify itself based on that knowledge, and continue the cycle. This
machine could help humanity solve some of its most difficult problems, or it could
conclude that humans are a threat or competing entity, and seek to mitigate that
threat.

A new species?
Should AI efforts prove successful, scientists suggest that what will be created could
be what amounts to a new species of life on this planet. We might relate to this new
species as a dog relates to humans. Dogs can generally understand some human
commands and respond to human interactions at some level, yet even the most
intelligent dog cannot comprehend something like a smartphone or the processes that
produced it. An AI species might quickly acquire the ability to produce knowledge,
weapons, vehicles, or other technologies that we can't begin to comprehend or
understand at even the most basic level.

Can the process be controlled?

What's interesting about the many voices expressing concern about AI is that they're
well-versed in technology, and all indicate that part of their concern is rooted in the fact
that we may be entirely unable to stop the creation of this new species. Various
suggestions for "fail safe" technologies have been put forth, whereby an intelligent
machine could be disabled. However, if the very premise of these machines is that
they learn and modify themselves, how could we "outsmart" a superior intelligence
and prevent it from removing a human-installed safeguard?
Furthermore, suggesting that humanity abandon research toward a technology that
could vastly improve the human race seems equally impossible. No government or
extra-governmental entity could ban invention and innovation and, even if that were
possible, it would be impossible to know in advance which research is "safe" and
which is a few steps away from producing an intelligence that has little need for
humanity.

What, me worry?
Much of this debate is reminiscent of the litany of other disasters that could spell the
end of humanity. Whether the concern is research on disease and bioweapons that
could create an unintentional pandemic, to worries about weapons of mass
destruction, there are all manner of potential disasters for the human race.

While worry about any of these risks might be enough to cause one to never leave the
house, ignoring areas like AI is equally counterproductive. Having a basic
understanding of the research into these areas, along with the pros and cons of what
that technology might create, can only help us better understand these activities.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/artificial-intelligence-know-its-purported-
benefits-and-risks/

Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of machines. It is about designing machines that can think.
Researchers also aim at introducing an emotional aspect into them. How will it affect our lives? Read this
Buzzle article for an overview of the pros and cons of artificial intelligence.
TAGGED UNDER: Artificial Intelligence
Advertisement

Artificial intelligence can help alleviate the difficulties faced by man but intelligent machines can never be
human.
Intelligence is best defined as the ability of an individual to adapt his/her behavior to new circumstances.
Human intelligence is not a single ability but is rather a composition of abilities like learning, reasoning,
problem solving, perception, and understanding of language. Since ancient times, people have been
thinking of designing machines that will replicate human intelligence. The concept of thinking machines
appears in Greek myths like the 'Talos of Crete'. John McCarthy coined the term, 'artificial intelligence' in
1956. He defines artificial intelligence as the science and engineering of making intelligent machines. AI
researchers hope to develop intelligent machines, which can perceive, learn and reason like humans.
General intelligence is their long-term goal. By general intelligence they mean to incorporate other aspects
like social intelligence, judgment, common sense, robotics, and self-awareness into machines.
Researchers dream of bringing into machines, factors such as wisdom and the ability to feel, which only
humans possess. 

Pros
▸ With artificial intelligence, the chances of error are almost nil and greater precision and accuracy is
achieved.

▸ Artificial intelligence finds applications in space exploration. Intelligent robots can be used to explore
space. They are machines and hence have the ability to endure the hostile environment of the
interplanetary space. They can be made to adapt in such a way that planetary atmospheres do not affect
their physical state and functioning.

▸ Intelligent robots can be programmed to reach the Earth's nadirs. They can be used to dig for fuels.
They can be used for mining purposes. The intelligence of machines can be harnessed for exploring the
depths of oceans. These machines can be of use in overcoming the limitations that humans have.

▸ Intelligent machines can replace human beings in many areas of work. Robots can do certain laborious
tasks. Painstaking activities, which have long been carried out by humans can be taken over by the
robots. Owing to the intelligence programmed in them, the machines can shoulder greater responsibilities
and can be programmed to manage themselves.

▸ Smartphones are a great example of the application of artificial intelligence. In utilities like predicting
what a user is going to type and correcting human errors in spelling, machine intelligence is at work.
Applications like Siri that act as personal assistants, GPS and Maps applications that give users the best
or the shortest routes to take as well as the traffic and time estimates to reach there, use artificial
intelligence. Applications on phones or computers that predict user actions and also make
recommendations that suit user choice, are applications of AI. Thus, we see that artificial intelligence has
made daily life a lot easier.

▸ Fraud detection in smart card-based systems is possible with the use of AI. It is also employed by
financial institutions and banks to organize and manage records.

▸ Organizations use avatars that are digital assistants who interact with the users, thus saving the need of
human resources.

▸ Emotions that often intercept rational thinking of a human being are not a hindrance for artificial thinkers.
Lacking the emotional side, robots can think logically and take the right decisions. Sentiments are
associated with moods that affect human efficiency. This is not the case with machines with artificial
intelligence.

▸ Artificial intelligence can be utilized in carrying out repetitive and time-consuming tasks efficiently.

▸ Intelligent machines can be employed to do certain dangerous tasks. They can adjust their parameters
such as their speed and time, and be made to act quickly, unaffected by factors that affect humans.
▸ When we play a computer game or operate a computer-controlled bot, we are in fact interacting with
artificial intelligence. In a game where the computer plays as our opponent, it is with the help of AI that the
machine plans the game moves in response to ours. Thus, gaming is among the most common examples
of the advantages of artificial intelligence.

▸ AI is at work in the medical field too. Algorithms can help the doctors assess patients and their health
risks. It can help them know the side effects that various medicines can have. Surgery simulators use
machine intelligence in training medical professionals. AI can be used to simulate brain functioning, and
thus prove useful in the diagnosis and treatment of neurological problems. As in case of any other field,
repetitive or time-consuming tasks can be managed through the application of artificial intelligence.

▸ Robotic pets can help patients with depression and also keep them active. 

Robotic radiosurgery helps achieve precision in the radiation given to tumors, thus reducing the damage
to surrounding tissues.

▸ The greatest advantage of artificial intelligence is that machines do not require sleep or breaks, and are
able to function without stopping. They can continuously perform the same task without getting bored or
tired. When employed to carry out dangerous tasks, the risk to human health and safety is reduced.

Cons
▸ One of the main disadvantages of artificial intelligence is the cost incurred in the maintenance and
repair. Programs need to be updated to suit the changing requirements, and machines need to be made
smarter. In case of a breakdown, the cost of repair may be very high. Procedures to restore lost code or
data may be time-consuming and costly.

▸ An important concern regarding the application of artificial intelligence is about ethics and moral values.
Is it ethically correct to create replicas of human beings? Do our moral values allow us to recreate
intelligence? Intelligence is a gift of nature. It may not be right to install it into a machine to make it work
for our benefit.

▸ Machines may be able to store enormous amounts of data, but the storage, access, and retrieval is not
as effective as in case of the human brain. They may be able to perform repetitive tasks for long, but they
do not get better with experience, like humans do. They are not able to act any different from what they
are programmed to do. Though this is mostly seen as an advantage, it may work the other way, when a
situation demands one to act in way different from the usual. Machines may not be as efficient as humans
in altering their responses depending on the changing situations.

▸ The idea of machines replacing human beings sounds wonderful. It appears to save us from all the pain.
But is it really so exciting? Ideas like working wholeheartedly, with a sense of belonging, and with
dedication have no existence in the world of artificial intelligence. Imagine robots working in hospitals. Do
you picture them showing the care and concern that humans would? Due you think online assistants
(avatars) can give the kind of service that a human being would? Concepts such as care, understanding,
and togetherness cannot be understood by machines, which is why, how much ever intelligent they
become, they will always lack the human touch.

▸ Imagine intelligent machines employed in creative fields. Do you think robots can excel or even compete
the human mind in creative thinking or originality? Thinking machines lack a creative mind. Human beings
 are emotional intellectuals. They think and feel. Their feelings guide their thoughts. This is not the case
with machines. The intuitive abilities that humans possess, the way humans can judge based on previous
knowledge, the inherent abilities that they have, cannot be replicated by machines. Also, machines lack
common sense.

▸ If robots begin to replace humans in every field, it will eventually lead to unemployment. People will be
left with nothing to do. So much empty time may result in its destructive use. Thinking machines will
govern all the fields and populate the positions that humans occupy, leaving thousands of people jobless.

▸ Also, due to the reduced need to use their intelligence, lateral thinking and multitasking abilities of
humans may diminish. With so much assistance from machines, if humans do not need to use their
thinking abilities, these abilities will gradually decline. With the heavy application of artificial intelligence,
humans may become overly dependent on machines, losing their mental capacities.

▸ If the control of machines goes in the wrong hands, it may cause destruction. Machines won't think
before acting. Thus, they may be programmed to do the wrong things, or for mass destruction.

▸ Apart from all these cons of AI, there is a fear of robots superseding humans. Ideally, human beings
should continue to be the masters of machines. However, if things turn the other way round, the world will
turn into chaos. Intelligent machines may prove to be smarter than us, they might enslave us and start
ruling the world. 

It should be understood that artificial intelligence has several pros but it has its disadvantages as well. Its
benefits and risks should be carefully weighed before employing it for human convenience. Or, in the
greed to play God, man may destroy himself.

Read more at Buzzle: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/pros-and-cons-of-artificial-intelligence.html

Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence

 Healthcare Articles and Infographics
Mar 1, 2014

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Intelligence is described as the ability to adapt to new environments and situations and
being able to understand consequences and effects that your actions cause. This is
something that all living creatures have in some way or another. Animals adapt to their
environments and react to interference, plants do the same. Human intelligence,
however, is in an entirely different ball park. With the uprise of technology and
advancements constantly being made, it has now come time to question the use of
artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence, or AI, means giving non living things, such
as computers and robots, the ability to think for themselves to an extent. What would
this mean for the future? Would the economy, society, and the world as we know it
change for the better or worse?

Pros Of Artificial Intelligence

No Breaks
One of the biggest benefits to using machines with some level of artificial intelligence
is that they could be utilized to do necessary jobs more efficiently. Machines do not
need to take breaks in the way that humans do. They do not need to sleep, eat, or use
the restroom. This would allow businesses to produce goods twenty four hours a day,
365 days a year.

Inhumane Circumstances
Artificial intelligence has allowed many avenues in research and exploration to
develop and advance that would not have if it did not exist. This is especially true with
space exploration. The satellites and rovers that are being sent in to space all of the
time can stay there forever, and continue to reach further and further out into our solar
system, giving us a much better understanding of what lays in the beyond.

No Emotional Barriers
Intelligent machines do not have emotions. This is greatly beneficial because nothing
interferes with their ability to perform the task they were designed to do. This is
completely untrue with humans, many people find it difficult to work under very
stressful conditions or during times of trauma.

Cost Efficient
Machines do not need to receive a paycheck every month. While they are quite costly
to maintain and power, this cost is greatly less than what an entire company full of
human employees would have to be paid. The costs are also minimized and
controlled.

Cons of Artificial Intelligence

Job Loss
With the introduction of machines that can complete human’s jobs quicker, more
accurate, and cheaper, the rate of jobs lost is climbing. Ever since the introduction of
factory machines people have been losing jobs to technologies.

Personal Connections
Another large concern to think about when it comes to artificial intelligence is their lack
of compassion and sympathy. If these robots are introduced into fields such as
healthcare, how can we ensure the patients and customers comfort? Sure, they can
be programmed to care, but it is not genuine.

Loss of Information
We have seen it time and time again, and probably even experienced it once or twice,
information being lost due to machine damages. The majority of our documents,
videos and images are all stored on computers, phones, and other forms of
technology. Many things can cause this information to be lost in an instant, and also
non retrievable. This could pose very large problems if artificial intelligence is
implemented in areas such as banks or healthcare.

Evolved?
It may seem like a science fiction movie, but what would really happen if these
artificially intelligent machines began to think for themselves, literally? It could pose
major security risks, but it sure does make a great story line.

Technology and advancements in this field are happening, and they are happening
very fast. It is something that we cannot and will not stop, so it is best to embrace the
changing world we live in and take advantage of all of the incredible things that we
have access to.