Artificial intelligence is here. It’s no longer science fiction, it’s real as it can be, and it’s getting more advanced by the day. And while there is a lot of controversy when it comes to artificial intelligence stealing our jobs and conquering the world, AI and all of its subfields are already helping us in our everyday lives.
AI can make your life a lot easier with its amazing features and ever-growing number of different tools that can be used in every aspect of our lives—you just have to be open-minded when it comes to this 21st century tech revolution
What Is Artificial Intelligence?
According to Wikipedia, the field of AI research defines itself as the study of "intelligent agents"; any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at some goal.
As a computer science field, AI was first mentioned back in the 1950s. The term “artificial intelligence” was coined by one of its founders, John McCarthy. McCarthy defines AI as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs”.
Basically, artificial intelligence is a way of making a computer, software, or a computer-operated robot think intelligently, much like humans do. The roots of AI can be traced back to the idea that machines can think in a way humans do—half a century of research data later, it looks like this is finally happening.
While we’ll need 50-100 years more to make these machines as intelligent as humans, our everyday lives are already rapidly changing due to the ever-expanding research and application of AI and all of its fields.
Is AI Good Or Bad For Us?
Let’s face it, a lot of people don’t see artificial intelligence as the next great chapter of human ingenuity and progress, but as a threat to our jobs and the way of life we’re used to. Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking warn people that artificial intelligence could even transcend humans and take our place as the most intelligent species on planet Earth. Musk even went as far as to compare the advancements in AI to “summoning a demon”.
On the other hand, Mark Zuckerberg dismisses all concerns regarding AI. The truth is probably somewhere in between. While it’s true that AI will replace us in a lot of jobs in the future, we can try to perceive this as the next step in our industrial and technological evolution instead of something bad.
Take a look at the Industrial revolution—even though a lot of people lost their jobs because of the machines, it was an essential part in our technological progress and ultimately led to the creation of new jobs. Without it, the world we live in today would be completely different.
You can choose to observe the AI revolution as an opportunity that could lead to something better, or as a threat to humanity. The choice is yours, but the harsh reality is that AI already plays a major part in our lives and we use it daily, whether you’re aware of it or no.
Chances Are You Are Using AI Daily
Let’s not look that far into the future, though, and for a moment, let’s not observe AI as the thing that could lead to the apocalypse. Let us focus on the benefits and the fact that AI is indeed intended to improve our lives and make everyday tasks much easier to perform.
Even if you are not aware of it, most of us already use artificial intelligence on a daily basis. In fact, a lot of people depend on it! If you don’t believe it, let’s look at some examples of AI-based platforms and services:
1. Email Management
Spam Filters
Have you ever wondered how and why the right emails land in the spam folder instead of your inbox? The answer is spam filters and they are actually powered by AI. Because spammers quickly adjust and change their messages, spam filters need to continuously learn from a range of signals, e.g. words in the message and metadata (where the message was sent from, who sent it, and so on).
Email Categorization
If you use Gmail, you know that your email gets separated into Primary, Social, Promotion and Updates (that are optional) folders. Very useful, indeed, but did you know this categorization is also based on AI? The same mechanism is used to mark certain emails as important.
Smart Response
While on the subject of Gmail—as of this year, you don’t even have to type your replies if you’re in a hurry. Pick one of the few Gmail now offers in the form of the AI-driven Smart Response.
2. Social Networks
Social media today relies on artificial intelligence to bring you the best possible user experience. From content placed in front of you, to facial recognition, they’ve got it all.
Facebook uses AI and its main subfield, machine learning, to present you with the most relevant information on your news feed. You have probably liked tens or hundreds of different pages. If Facebook showed you all the posts from all the pages together with updates from all of your friends, you would probably be overwhelmed with information that doesn’t really interest you that much. Instead, Facebook’s algorithms learn about you based on your interactions, which is how Facebook shows you what it concludes you would like to see.
Another example of Facebook’s application of artificial intelligence can be spotted when you upload a photo there. Facebook instantly suggests people you can tag and in most cases, the suggestions are correct. Algorithms in question mimic the structure of the human brain to power the facial recognition software.
Pinterest’s use of AI comes down to computer vision, an application of AI where computers are taught to “see” in order to automatically identify objects in images and then recommend visually similar pins. So, if you like a pin with a black and white square carpet, chances are you will see suggested pins with similar items. Aside from this, Pinterest also uses artificial intelligence for spam prevention, search and discovery, and a lot more.
Snapchat
Snapchat became famous mostly because of its facial filters introduced in 2015. These filters use machine learning for movement tracking and that is how the filter moves the way you move. Yes, you read it right! Those cool photo and video filters are AI-based.
3. Smart Personal Assistants
These assistants are probably what all of us expect when someone says artificial intelligence. They have advanced voice recognition software and they can respond to your voice commands. This means you can actually communicate with them and have them perform tasks for you, e.g. browse for information, make lists, set reminders, make orders online, etc. So instead of spending time on typing, you can tell the personal assistant what you need or what you're looking for.
Siri by Apple, Alexa by Amazon, Cortana by Microsoft, and Google Assistant are the most popular and advanced smart personal assistants and most of us have probably used at least one of them.
AI Helps You Be More Productive
In the chaotic day and age we live in, we need better tools to help us be more productive and use our limited time during the day to achieve more. By doing repetitive tasks for us and tackling large amounts of data, artificial intelligence just might be the key to our ever growing need for higher productivity rates and more time.
Whether you’re a student, business owner, manager or a freelancer, you have probably faced the struggle of finding ways to be more productive. AI is rapidly entering this area of our lives and the results are amazing! Smart personal assistants are a great indicator of how AI can be useful when it comes to productivity and effective use of time. Here are few more examples of great use of artificial intelligence:
Futurenda is an AI-based mobile app that will organize your time for you. This AI agenda plans things out by dividing tasks into sessions and automatically placing them into the agenda. This app is smart enough to keep an eye on the deadlines and adjust the agenda accordingly.
X.ai is artificial intelligence in the form of a personal assistant that is used for scheduling meetings. You just need to reply to a mail with “cc: Amy” and the virtual personal assistant will take care of it. This AI-powered tool will help you save valuable time usually spent when trying to schedule a meeting via email.
Wrappup is a voice recorder that helps you highlight what’s important and summarize your meetings. With the smart use of AI, Wrappup processes speech and creates playable summaries of your discussions.
Hibox is a tool intended for task management and business chat that uses an artificial intelligence bot to automatically recognize patterns in messages and suggest possible actions, like creating a task or assigning it to someone else.
Summary
While there is still a lot of controversy surrounding the fast expansion of artificial intelligence as a field of study, it is undeniable that existing and potential applications of this groundbreaking technology are amazing. From medicine, to business and everyday lives, AI is being developed to make things easier and save us some precious time.
With its complicated mixture of computer science, mathematics, and other sciences, artificial intelligence is definitely one of the greatest accomplishments of humankind. Whether it will surpass us or not remains to be seen. In the meanwhile, relax and enjoy all the benefits it has to offer and remember how lucky we are to be alive in the time where people are managing to make machines learn and think.
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