You must definitely have come across the word “Artificial Intelligence”. It is one of the hottest topics in the tech industry, and rightly so! There has been comprehensive research on this subject from decades and significant breakthroughs have been achieved in the past few years. These breakthroughs and achievements are the results of the amplified interest in artificial intelligence and its unconstrained potential which has been realized by many tech experts in the industry.

But what is artificial intelligence? What have revolutionizing breakthroughs achieved in the recent years? Let’s find out!

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, in short, is the simulation of human intellect processes that are embedded into the machine, most computer systems. The process comprises of learning reasoning and self-correction techniques. For instance, machine vision and speech recognition are the common examples of AI.

There are two types of AI, namely applied AI and generalized AI. The former uses the principles of simulation, human judgments and thoughts to perform specific tasks, while the latter focuses on the development of machine intelligence to carry out tasks like human beings.

Revolutionizing breakthroughs in AI

Artificial Intelligence is already playing a big role in our lives. For instance, take the example of search results. We verbally instruct Siri or Google to search for a particular term and your mobile translates your voice command into meaningful instructions and provide you with the most relevant results.

There has been a lot of breakthrough advancements pertaining to AI in last few decades. Let’s explore some of them in detail.

Self-driving Cars

Self-driving cars is one of the most anticipated AI advancement that has been successfully implemented. In recent times, when we hear about self-driving cars, we instantly think about Tesla, but do you know that the first project of implementing AI to drive car dates back to 1995 when Mercedes-Benz tested a modified S-Class car from Munich to Copenhagen.

The car successfully made the journey of 1043 miles with the top speed of 115 mph by using 60 transputer chips, which were used to compute data efficiently and promptly. The car was also able to read the road signs and performed many tasks like modern autonomous cars. However, the autonomous cars that we see today are much safer and efficient due to the advancement in computer science and technology.

Voice Recognition Software

Tech experts are heavily invested and interested in embedding the understanding of natural language into the machines using Artificial Intelligence. The biggest example of voice recognition AI revolutionary breakthrough is SIRI, which uses AI statistical techniques to understand verbal commands.

Siri was originally developed by SRI International, then acquired by Apple and ever since it has been an integral part of iOS. It is one of the greatest examples of machine learning, however, that is not the only voice recognition software in the market. Microsoft Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Assistance have also proved their worth.

These voice recognition software has completely reshaped the way we interact and perform an operation using our mobiles and other smart devices. If we go back a decade, it would seem almost impossible to interact with our devices like we do.

AlphaGo

Another revolutionary breakthrough was achieved in March 2016 when AlphaGo software, which was designed by Google, was able to beat a top-ranked player, Lee Sedol, in the board game “Go”. What makes it interesting is that “Go” is more challenging and complex game than Chess. AlphaGo was specially trained using a combination of AI and human opponents.

Though this invention is not famous or have wide implications like the autonomous car or voice recognition system, it shows the potential of artificial intelligence in the future as the software was successfully able to make its own judgments and decisions.

The Final Words

There have been many significant innovations pertaining to artificial intelligence, most of which took place in recent years. The pace of innovation has been picked up in past few years as the cost of crunching vast amount of data has become much more affordable due to powerful GPUs. If the recent trend of AI continues, we may see some groundbreaking innovations in the future.