Today, all of the Internet Users must have heard of the term ‘Artificial Intelligence.’ But do you know what the key moment in the history of mankind was when the seed of Artificial intelligence was planted? What were the ideas that inspired modern humans to invent such technology? Read this blog till the end, if you want to know or enhance your knowledge about Artificial Intelligence, its history, how it works and Benefits.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence or AI is referred to as the intelligence that is demonstrated by machines. The term is used to define the machines or computers capable of imitating the ‘cognitive’ functions associated with the human mind, like ‘problem-solving’ and ‘learning.’
It includes the study of the human brain, how it thinks, makes decisions, learns, and works. AI aims to improve those functions of machines that are associated with human intelligence, such as reasoning, perception, linguistic intelligence, etc.
The key objectives of AI research are Knowledge Representation, Natural Language Processing, Planning, and the ability to manipulate and move objects. The main subjects that are included in AI are Mathematics, Science, Psychology, Philosophy, Neuroscience, Linguistics, Computer Engineering, and many more.
History of Artificial Intelligence
The phrase “Artificial Intelligence” was invented by John McCarthy in 1956 at the ‘Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence.’ This conference (led by John McCarthy) defined the goals and scope of Artificial Intelligence.
The history of AI began with the myths, rumors, and stories (written in antiquity) about artificial beings that were endowed with human-like intelligence and consciousness. The seeds of AI were planted by the ancient Greek philosophers when they attempted to describe the process and working of human-thinking as a mechanical manipulation of symbols. Human’s quest to understand the working of their intelligence began with Aristotle’s development of the syllogism and the use of deductive reasoning.
However, the modern understanding of AI is considered to begin with the first mathematic model proposed for building a neural network. This model was introduced in 1943 by Warren McCullough and Walter Pitts, in the paper “A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity.”
How Does AI Work?
Artificial Intelligence combines a large amount of data with intelligent algorithms and iterative processing. It enables the software to learn from the features or patterns of the data automatically. AI is a vast field of study that includes various methods, theories, and technologies. The major subfields of AI are mentioned below:-
• Artificial Neural Network
Artificial Neural Network belongs to interconnected nodes that work similar to the human nervous system’s functioning. It receives the image in the form of a vector and input signals from the external environment in the form a pattern.
• Machine Learning
Machine learning is the sub-field of AI (Artificial Intelligence) that provides the systems with the ability to learn automatically and improve from their experiences, without being programmed. It focuses on the development of computer programs that can access data and utilize it for themselves.
• Cognitive Computing
This field of Artificial Intelligence aims to simulate the human thought process in a computerized model. It allows the system to imitate the functioning of a human brain through self-learning algorithms that use data mining, pattern recognition, and other methods.
• Computer Vision
Computer Vision is the subset of AI that trains computers to understand and interpret the visual world. It makes use of images and videos to enable the machines to identify and classify the objects and react to it.
• Natural Language Processing
Natural Language Processing is the AI’s subset that deals with the interaction between humans and computers using the natural language. It mainly focuses on programming computers to process and analyze a large amount of natural language data. It includes speech recognition, natural-language generation, and natural language understanding.
Conclusion
So, in this blog, we discussed AI and its history. We gave an overview of some of the major sub-fields of Artificial Intelligence, including Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Artificial Neural Network, and others. This write-up gives a brief idea of the basic functioning and goals of AI.
