Artificial Intelligence – Part II
Nowadays, through news and television we hear a lot about autonomous or driverless automobiles. Artificial Intelligence has an immense contribution in this area. Google is currently working on a project called ‘Google Driverless Car’. With the help of Laser radars and sensors, obstructions on the roads can be detected and then fed to their software program. Then with the help of this information, the program decides the route that the car will take. Although these fully automatic or autonomous cars haven’t arrived in the market, yet minor subsets of these are being used to an extent in present day cars. The Intelligent parking system, Collision avoidance system and Driver assistance system are very much in use in today’s vehicles. Such automated systems, built with the application of AI, assist drivers and help in reducing the number of accidents caused by human errors. With the ever increasing number of cars on the road and considering the difficulties faced by drivers, efforts of creating automatic cars would surely be appreciated by all. A notable fact is that in 2012, Government of Nevada, in the United States has passed a law which permits driverless cars to ply on roads.
Other applications of Artificial Intelligence
AI has been used widely in the Healthcare industry. During visit to a doctor, the doctor’s assistants and nurses ask various questions regarding medical history and background of the patient. Recently, Speech Recognition softwares have been invented which feed these answers into a software which is helpful for diagnosis by the doctor. Recognizing the benefits from AI in the field of medicine, a society named AIME (Society for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine) has been set up in Europe. According to specialists, the field of medicine would witness great improvement in the future due to the combination of AI and Robotics. All these efforts are being made to decrease the manual errors which may have a very damaging effect on the field of Medicine.
Artificial Intelligence is now being used in the field of military as well. A few countries have created automatic aircrafts and tanks. They can autonomously select their targets and can destroy them. With image recognition and AI reasoning techniques, such tanks and aircrafts can ‘observe’ the surrounding situation and take necessary actions. Flight crews are being developed which can skilfully change the route of the aeroplanes based on surrounding conditions. These machines will also have the ability to ‘converse’ with each other as well as to follow verbal instructions given by the pilot.
The latest vacuum cleaners also apply concepts of Artificial Intelligence. Once these vacuum cleaners are placed on the floor, they “intelligently” clean only the floor and leave the furniture and other obstacles which may come in the way. Once they are switched on, they do not need any further monitoring and get switched off automatically once the cleaning activity is finished. Autonomous equipment used for digging of roads as well as for extinguishing fire by the firemen also use this technology. It is also used on a large scale in machines which execute tasks deemed tedious or dangerous for humans.
We will now see other diverse applications of Artificial Intelligence.
- Just like driverless cars, we also have driverless trains.
- AI has helped the banking softwares immensely. It helps distinguish fraudulent transactions by recognizing an irregularity in the pattern of the transactions.
- AI is actively being used in algorithms used in software programs for Stock trading. It has been immensely useful in trading based on the various patterns of the market.
- Home Security Systems no longer depends only on sensors and radars. AI helps them to distinguish members of the family from an intruder, thus alerting correctly.
- The IVR i.e. Interactive Voice Recognition System, is highly influenced by AI.
- The autopilot system which is widely used in modern aircrafts also has its base in AI.
Although Artificial Intelligence has many advantages, it also comes with certain negatives.
- With the increase in demand of Artificially Intelligent Robots, many jobs are getting replaced by them and such machines, which in turn may reduce employment.
- Robots and machines are replacing employees due to which lack of human intellectuality may be felt.
- AI may be able to make a machine or a program perform exactly as instructed, however it should not be forgotten that these imparted instructions would have certain limitations.
- Artificial Intelligence uses a technique called Heuristics, as per which the answers to certain questions or solutions to some issues may be satisfying to an extent but not necessarily optimal.
- It is up to us to look at the correct ways to utilize it. If we compare Artificial Intelligence to the human brain, we may end up finding various limitations. Rather than this, it can be utilized as an asset to humans for their assistance.
Lately, scientists are trying their level best to make rapid progress in Artificial Intelligence. It may even take several years or even decades for satisfactory results to be achieved. However, the journey in itself would be very promising which would introduce the world to several new things.
|| Hari Om || || Shriram || || Ambadnya ||