Will they be our friends?

We have a new member to our world. Which may turn into an indivisible part of our lives. A machine  that understands the human mind, thinks and works like humans. Those are programmed to recognise, learn and plan like humans and even mimic their actions. We all are partly dependent upon them. We are talking about Artificial Intelligence.

All artificial intelligence systems fall into one of three types:

● Artificial narrow intelligence (ANI), which has a narrow range of abilities;

● Artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is as good as human capabilities;

● Artificial superintelligence (ASI), which is more capable than a human.

Most of us are unaware that we frequently use the narrow AI. Let me give some examples so it is more clear.

RankBrain is a search engine algorithm. Helps Google to process search results and provide more relevant search results for users.

Siri, a friendly voice-activated assistant. Uses machine-learning technology to assist us to open applications, make voice calls, find information, send messages and so on.

Youtube’s kids section restricts you to watching some videos. Google’s spam folder stores the emails that google feels may be harmful for you.Email spam filters and social media monitoring tools for dangerous content makes use of Narrow AI technology.

Amazon Echo, connects to the voice-controlled virtual AI service Alexa. The features of the device include: voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, and playing audiobooks, providingweather, traffic and other real-time information. It can also control several smart devices.

Cortana, is a virtual assistant developed by Microsoft, which uses the Bing search engine to perform tasks such as setting reminders and answering questions for the user.

Image or facial recognition software. In 1965, Woody Bledsoe, Helen Chan Wolf, and Charles Bisson had created a work which used the computer to recognize human faces. They did not get much fame but their work did. Nowadays, many mobile phones unlock with facial recognition, widely used for face ID verifications, SnapChat's animated lenses use this technology, It is used in DeepFace by Facebook, is a deep learning facial recognition system.

In July 1849, Austrian forces made first use of drone robots. In naval aviation for bombing tests. Today, drones are improved at much powerful stages and widely being used in various domains.

IBM's Watson, a question answering computing system designed from Q&A pairs. Can also see, hear, read, talk, interpret, learn and recommend. We widely use this for weather forecasting, tax preparations, in domains like teaching, fashion, chatbots, healthcare. Watson was named after IBM's founder and first CEO, industrialist Thomas J. Watson.

The first semi-automated car was developed in 1977 by Japan's Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Laboratory. Self-driving cars combine a variety of sensors and advanced control systems to identify appropriate navigation paths, as well as obstacles. Today, BMW, Nissan, Ford, Tesla, Mercedes-Benz and many more are in the race of self-driving cars.

Have you heard of the “Perfect Paul”? Stephen Hawking's best friend. Perfect Paul is the name given to Late Stephen Hawking's voice through DECtalk. DECtalk, one of the first devices to translate text into speech. The only copy of Hawking's speech synthesizer is contained in “CallText 5010”. So, Prof Stephen Hawking's voice was actually a voice recognition AI machine.

AI systems not only replicate human intelligence processes, but also keep expanding them, without our support. And may progressively replace human skills and increase unemployment.

Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates says artificial intelligence is so incredible, it will change society in some very deep ways. Artificial intelligence 'both promising and dangerous'.

Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain's distinguished scientists who himself was an AI dependent, told: "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."

We got to think !!!

AI has created a new era. These friends of ours are being designed by us to be smarter than us. Who understands much more and with greater speed than us. But, be aware before totally relying. A heartfelt welcome! But you got to decide what privileges you want to give to our new friend.

- Amruta Gat