Artificial Intelligence: the future is already around us

Amazed by hundreds of movies about the artificial intelligence, this seems to be still part of a future world. In reality it is an informatic sector that dates back in the ’60s which studies how  hardware and software systems can have performances similar to the human intelligence. Only the power of the last years processors, though, makes those technologies finally available for the daily use.

Specifically it’s about to create a system of complex choices able to learn from the previous results (feedback mechanism) and so to get close to what the human reasoining is.

Due to the huge potential of the AI’s application there is a kind of charme around them. But we have to be careful becuase if its usage won’t be correct it can even have negative implications.

Stephen Hawking in the 2014 describes it as a danger for the human surviving, and Elon Musk the same here twittes:

We have to be super careful about the artificial intelligence. Potentially it is much more dangerous than the nuclear.

When we talk about artificial intelligence the first thought goes to robots able to speak and feel sentiments, this though is part of the science-fiction world. The AI currently cover a much more larger sector of applications.

Artificial intelligence: not only robots

From the videogames, to the weather forecasts, to the mission into the space the AI is now largely used and we daily interact with it, without even know it.

Let’s start from the virtual assistants: if you ask informations to Siri, Cortana or Alexa you are actually asking something to a software that uses the artificial intelligence. They use, infact, firstly the vocal recognition which is able to translate what you say into informations.

Besides this it’s been chosen some key words like “call”, “look for”, etc… which allow to make the conversation with the software much more easier. Those commands replace the bottons which are normally pushed to make the wondered actions.

The unexpected are maybe right the videogames, thanks to the artificial intelligence they are infact able to beat the users. And we are talking about when the stories evolve according to the actions made by the player by creating situations always different and unexpected. Some examples are Halo or Call of Duty, where the enemies react to the moves of the player to beat it.

In case of the chats, maybe they aren’t always conclusive and you maybe thought that was better to speak with a person. Or maybe, instead, you didn’t even understand that you were talking with a chatbot, which are the automatic systems for the customer service. Those are particularly sophisticated, infact they are able to understand the customer request often starting not from predefined answers, but by what the user directly writes.

You will be amazed by that, by the artificial intelligence is able to replace even the journalists. Even if only for sports and financial news, there are automatic systems able to create short news. Websites like AP, Fox and Yahoo use them to create short texts with the usage of financial datas or the results of the sport matches.

The AI in the fight to the crime

The most amazing usage is the one of the applications that manage the video surveillance. Those infact, besides the support of an operator that controls in real time the shootings, are able to detect possible uncorrect behaviours.

For exampe by analizing the images and comparing them with the setted behaviour schemes, they can detect if someone is going to use a gun, or if is going to live a bag.

About the bank frauds instead, the artificial intelligence is able to understand if we are not us to make the purchases. Infact, even though every of us thinks to be original, we are all really habitual and often we spend the same amounts and we go to the same shops.

A system of bank AI can understand if there is aincongruence in the usage of a card. For example when suddenly has been made a purchase in a so far place.

This post is also available in: Italiano