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Welcome to the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI)!

This guide introduces AI and its subfields along with some terminology associated with it.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

In simple terms, AI refers to machines (or computers) that mimic "cognitive" functions associated with the human mind, such as learning, problem-solving, and reasoning.

A more formal definition is given by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in their AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0):

The AI RMF refers to an AI system as an engineered or machine-based system that can, for a given set of objectives, generate outputs such as predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments. AI systems are designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy.

How AI Evolved Over The Years?

                                                                               Figure 1: Timeline for important events in AI evolution    

  1. 1943: McCullough and Pitts introduced the "neuron model" which became the foundation of neural networks. The neuron model discussed parallelism between computing machines and the human brain.
  2. 1950: Alan Turing created the "Turing test" to test the intelligence of a machine.
  3. 1955: A computer program called "Logic Theorist" was designed to mimic humans' problem-solving skills. Scientist John McCarthy coined the term "artificial intelligence."
  4. 1958: Cornell Aeronautical Lab scientist and later Cornell University professor Rosenblatt developed the "Perceptron", a machine that could perceive, recognize, and identify its surroundings without human control.
  5. 1965: ELIZA, a natural language program, similar to today's chatbot, was created to handle limited conversation.
  6. 1997: IBM's computer program, "Deep Blue" beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov.
  7. 2000 - 2014: IBM's Watson program defeats Jeopardy quiz champions; self-driving cars, virtual assistants (Siri, Alexa...) were introduced.
  8. 2020 onwards: Generative AI and Large Language Models revolutionized AI.

 

What are the subfields of AI?

The term "AI" can be used for any system mimicking human cognitive skills, such as planning, pattern recognition, and decision-making. We can broadly categorize AI into the following subfields (Figure 2):

                                                                       Figure 2: Subfields of Artificial Intelligence

 

What are the applications of AI?

There are numerous applications of AI; from healthcare to finance, from designing robots to cybersecurity, from recommender systems to search engines, and so on. Some of the other applications are given below:

  1. Targeted advertising and personalized recommendations (like Amazon)
  2. Virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa use AI to understand natural language commands.
  3. Language translation, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and summarizing a document are all applications of AI using natural language processing.
  4. Facial recognition, image/video captioning are examples of AI applications.
  5. In finance, AI is used for fraud detection and algorithmic trading.
  6. In healthcare, analysis of biosignals (EEG, ECG, MEG) and imaging (MRI) using AI has helped in understanding the diseases and making better predictions for health.

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