Intro To Basic Artificial Intelligence Without The Gobbledygook

The news contains much about the changes artificial intelligence will bring. An intro to basic artificial intelligence (AI) can help anyone see better what those changes might be. It begins though with the 1980’s.

Basic artificial intelligence, as we know it today, hasn’t changed since the 1980’s.

Three Forces Propelling Artificial Intelligence Today

Yes, AI, as we know it today, is that old. In fact, it has not changed since. What has changed though since then are the three main forces propelling it today:

1. Super powerful and fast computers
2. Advanced coding methods
3. Huge digital data sources

It’s like a car. The concept has not changed. The materials, technology and knowledge that go into it have.

Basic Artificial Intelligence Learning

To see why these three forces are key to AI’s growth, look at the two ways it learns.

1. We stock it with a lot of data.
2. It collects, processes and makes a lot of data on its own.

Yet, here’s the rub. Take a child. Show him an apple. He might only need to see a few different ones before picking it out on his own from a bowl of mixed fruits. AI though might need up to forty million different ones. That’s why AI can’t work without a lot of data.

Of course, stocking AI with forty million apple pics would take a lot of work. So, AI collects them too. However, since AI is not sure what an apple looks, it has to learn.

To do this, AI looks first at a picture. It might be of the apple, it might not. AI guesses. It then compares its guess to the right answers. If it’s right, it reinforces its calculations. If it’s wrong, it revises them.

How does it know whether it’s right or wrong? We tell it. We do this by saying on Facebook for example, “Here’s a pic of the apple I had for lunch.” It also happens when we search for apple images. The one we choose tells AI what a “good” apple looks like.

Artificial Intelligence, The New Using The Old Ways

In the end, you and I are feeding and teaching AI. We do this almost any time we use a digital device hooked to cyberspace. Then, it takes supercomputers to search that space, to collect data and to process it with very complex code. Finally, AI, the most advanced form of technology, learns by the oldest way ever . . . trial and error . . . at ultra-fast speeds.