Artificial Intelligence is simply the way to go...

Ever since the inception of computers, there was exponential rise of their usage across various fields. Artificial Intelligence is a branch of Computer Science which deals with the process of creating machines or computers that are as intelligent as real humans. In the words of John McCarthy, ‘AI is the science and engineering of producing intelligent devices and that too particularly intelligent computer programs.

AI works based on the observations from human brain’s thinking pattern and by analyzing the way humans learn new things, make good decisions and work while solving a complex problem. Once they gather these data, they make use of the outcomes to develop intelligent systems and software. The development of the field of Artificial Intelligence began with embedding similar levels of intelligence in machines such as the one found in human beings.

The 2 primary goals of AI are as follows:

i.                     Creation of expert systems:  These systems must be capable of exhibiting intelligent behavior, learn, explain, demonstrate and offer advice to its users.

ii.                   Imparting human intelligence in machines:  It involves developing systems that can think, understand, learn and behave exactly like humans.

In general, AI can be explained as a combination of different disciplines of science such as Biology, Computer Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Mathematics, Linguistics and Engineering. One of the major challenges of AI is creating computer functions associated with human intelligence such as learning, reasoning and problem solving.

Artificial Intelligence finds its application in numerous fields which are as follows:

1. Natural Language Processing

It makes it possible to interact with a computer system that could possibly understand normal language spoken by us humans.

2. Gaming

Already AI has started playing vital roles in several strategic games such as poker, chess and tic-tac-toe where the machines employ their heuristic knowledge to calculate large number of possible game positions.

3. Vision Systems

Such systems interpret, comprehend and understand visual inputs on the computer. A few examples include clinical expert system used by doctors, photographs taken by spying airplanes and the computer software used by police officials to recognize the face of known criminals.

4. Expert Systems

Expert systems integrate software, machine and special information to impart advising and reasoning. They offer required information and detailed explanation to its users.

5. Handwriting recognition

This kind of software is capable of reading the text written on paper by a pen or on screen by a stylus. It recognizes letter shapes and converts them into an editable text.

6. Speech recognition

These are intelligent systems that can hear and comprehend the language in terms of individual sentences and their corresponding meaning from a human speech. They are equipped with special features to handle slang words, background noise, strange accents and change in sound pitch.

7. Intelligent Robots.

These robots perform the tasks assigned by humans. Their sensors can detect various physical data such as heat, light, temperature, sound, movement, pressure and bump. Through their multiple sensors, vast memory and efficient processors they exhibit incredible levels of intelligence. Additionally, they can even learn from their past mistakes and can easily adapt to a new environment.