AI already playing a significant role in everyday life
A humanoid robot developed at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the University of Zurich. PHOTO | AFP
What you need to know:
Beyond mobile and social platforms, tech giants such as IBM and Microsoft have been keen on harnessing the power of AI to deliver systems focusing on business intelligence, into which their clients are able to plug and have a solid ground on their decision making processes.
Self-driving cars and robots replacing the human workforce are probably some of the exciting scenarios that jump to the mind whenever the term Artificial Intelligence (AI) is mentioned.
From the way Facebook is able to recommend new friends to you, to the way traffic apps such as Waze help you reach your destination faster by recommending routes with less traffic, AI is transforming our lives.
But what precisely is AI? It is the simulation of human intelligence processes such as learning, reasoning and self-correction by machines, especially computer systems.
An example of AI is a map on your phone that will help you get the next coffee shop. There is also the autopilot system in an aircraft.
For quite some time now, Facebook has been highlighting faces of, and suggesting friends for a user to tag whenever the user uploads a photo. The platform uses algorithms that mimic the structure of the human brain to power facial recognition software.
Facebook also uses AI to personalise news feeds and posts. This way, adverts are targeted to particular users, meaning a higher chance of clicking them and eventually making a purchase from the advertisers.
Another application of AI is in the voice-to-text feature common in most smartphones. At the press of a button, or saying a particular phrase such as ‘OK Google’, you can start speaking and the phone converts the audio content into text.
Also for a long time, accurate automated transcription was beyond the abilities of even the most advanced computers but thanks to AI work is underway to ensure that future speech-recognition systems will transcribe conversations even more accurately than humans.
Beyond mobile and social platforms, tech giants such as IBM and Microsoft have been keen on harnessing the power of AI to deliver systems focusing on business intelligence, into which their clients are able to plug and have a solid ground on their decision making processes.
Mr Nyabera is a technology creative and writer at Protel studios.
PAYE Tax Calculator
Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
