February 09, 2018
Artificial Intelligence is now embedded in daily lives. Some applications are obvious, while others work behind the scenes and are taken for granted.
Many commercial airlines use AI for their auto pilot systems. Technology guides much of the flight these days, though takeoff and landing need the human touch.
Games such as Chess and Backgammon make significant use of AI, matching skills with humans. Some expert players will require the intelligence level set high for a good challenge.
Artificial intelligence can be used to write simple news stories such as sports recaps, fantasy sports reports and financial summaries. AI will not generate articles with complex analysis, but it can handle very simple ones.
Customer Service on the Web is another area where AI is heavily used. Many websites offer customers the chance to chat with customer support. This a very common application of artificial intelligence. These chat support bots are simply automated responders. Some, however, are able to extract information from the site and present it to you on request.
Surveillance systems also use AI in, well, an intelligent way. A single person monitoring video cameras is not very secure; people get bored easily; and keeping track of multiple monitors can be difficult. Using AI to monitor those cameras makes sense. The AI is trained to take input from security cameras and determine whether there may be a threat. What is determined to be a warning sign is then alerted to human security officers.
Another example of AI that is now common is the recommendation systems used by apps like Netflix, YouTube and Deezer. The apps recommend movies and music based on the interests you’ve expressed and judgments you’ve made in the past. By monitoring your choices and inserting them into a learning algorithm, these apps recommend what you will likely to be interested in ... most of the time.
Panmedia has produced something similar with a ChatBot that acts as a digital FAQ assistant for website users. It responds to inquiries and learns new answers when users ask questions not initially addressed. It is used mainly on the homepage but can be installed on any page.
Smartphone and computer programmes like the Google Assistant, Siri and Cortana are all intelligent digital personal assistants. They are the obvious applications of AI, learning more as the user interacts. We could name Samsung’s Bixby as well but the jury is out on its level of intelligence.
Please tell us if you can you think of other ways you interact with AI?