Showing posts with label Alan Turing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alan Turing. Show all posts

Artificial Intelligence - Who Is Sherry Turkle?

 


 

 

Sherry Turkle(1948–) has a background in sociology and psychology, and her work focuses on the human-technology interaction.

While her study in the 1980s focused on how technology affects people's thinking, her work in the 2000s has become more critical of how technology is utilized at the expense of building and maintaining meaningful interpersonal connections.



She has employed artificial intelligence in products like children's toys and pets for the elderly to highlight what people lose out on when interacting with such things.


Turkle has been at the vanguard of AI breakthroughs as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the creator of the MIT Initiative on Technology and the Self.

She highlights a conceptual change in the understanding of AI that occurs between the 1960s and 1980s in Life on the Screen: Identity inthe Age of the Internet (1995), substantially changing the way humans connect to and interact with AI.



She claims that early AI paradigms depended on extensive preprogramming and employed a rule-based concept of intelligence.


However, this viewpoint has given place to one that considers intelligence to be emergent.

This emergent paradigm, which became the recognized mainstream view by 1990, claims that AI arises from a much simpler set of learning algorithms.

The emergent method, according to Turkle, aims to emulate the way the human brain functions, assisting in the breaking down of barriers between computers and nature, and more generally between the natural and the artificial.

In summary, an emergent approach to AI allows people to connect to the technology more easily, even thinking of AI-based programs and gadgets as children.



Not just for the area of AI, but also for Turkle's study and writing on the subject, the rising acceptance of the emerging paradigm of AI and the enhanced relatability it heralds represents a significant turning point.


Turkle started to employ ethnographic research techniques to study the relationship between humans and their gadgets in two edited collections, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With (2007) and The Inner History of Devices (2008).


She emphasized in her book The Inner History of Devices that her intimate ethnography, or the ability to "listen with a third ear," is required to go past the advertising-based clichés that are often employed when addressing technology.


This method comprises setting up time for silent meditation so that participants may think thoroughly about their interactions with their equipment.


Turkle used similar intimate ethnographic approaches in her second major book, Alone Together

Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011), to argue that the increasing connection between people and the technology they use is harmful.

These issues are connected to the increased usage of social media as a form of communication, as well as the continuous degree of familiarity and relatability with technology gadgets, which stems from the emerging AI paradigm that has become practically omnipresent.

She traced the origins of the dilemma back to early pioneers in the field of cybernetics, citing, for example, Norbert Weiner's speculations on the idea of transmitting a human person across a telegraph line in his book God & Golem, Inc.(1964).

Because it reduces both people and technology to information, this approach to cybernetic thinking blurs the barriers between them.



In terms of AI, this implies that it doesn't matter whether the machines with which we interact are really intelligent.


Turkle claims that by engaging with and caring for these technologies, we may deceive ourselves into feeling we are in a relationship, causing us to treat them as if they were sentient.

In a 2006 presentation titled "Artificial Intelligence at 50: From Building Intelligence to Nurturing Sociabilities" at the Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference, she recognized this trend.

She identified the 1997 Tamagotchi, 1998 Furby, and 2000 MyReal Baby as early versions of what she refers to as relational artifacts, which are more broadly referred to as social machines in the literature.

The main difference between these devices and previous children's toys is that these devices come pre-animated and ready for a relationship, whereas previous children's toys required children to project a relationship onto them.

Turkle argues that this change is about our human weaknesses as much as it is about computer capabilities.

In other words, just caring for an item increases the likelihood of not only seeing it as intelligent but also feeling a connection to it.

This sense of connection is more relevant to the typical person engaging with these technologies than abstract philosophic considerations concerning the nature of their intelligence.



Turkle delves more into the ramifications of people engaging with AI-based technologies in both Alone Together and Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (2015).


She provides the example of Adam in Alone Together, who appreciates the appreciation of the AI bots he controls over in the game Civilization.

Adam appreciates the fact that he is able to create something fresh when playing.

Turkle, on the other hand, is skeptical of this interaction, stating that Adam's playing isn't actual creation, but rather the sensation of creation, and that it's problematic since it lacks meaningful pressure or danger.

In Reclaiming Conversation, she expands on this point, suggesting that social partners simply provide a perception of camaraderie.

This is important because of the value of human connection and what may be lost in relationships that simply provide a sensation or perception of friendship rather than true friendship.

Turkle believes that this transition is critical.


She claims that although connections with AI-enabledtechnologies may have certain advantages, they pale in contrast to what is missing: 

  • the complete complexity and inherent contradictions that define what it is to be human.


A person's connection with an AI-enabled technology is not as intricate as one's interaction with other individuals.


Turkle claims that as individuals have become more used to and dependent on technology gadgets, the definition of friendship has evolved.


  • People's expectations for companionship have been simplified as a result of this transformation, and the advantages that one wants to obtain from partnerships have been reduced.
  • People now tend to associate friendship only with the concept of interaction, ignoring the more nuanced sentiments and arguments that are typical in partnerships.
  • By engaging with gadgets, one may form a relationship with them.
  • Conversations between humans have become merely transactional as human communication has shifted away from face-to-face conversation and toward interaction mediated by devices. 

In other words, the most that can be anticipated is engagement.



Turkle, who has a background in psychoanalysis, claims that this kind of transactional communication allows users to spend less time learning to view the world through the eyes of another person, which is a crucial ability for empathy.


Turkle argues we are in a robotic period in which people yearn for, and in some circumstances prefer, AI-based robotic companionship over that of other humans, drawing together these numerous streams of argument.

For example, some people enjoy conversing with their iPhone's Siri virtual assistant because they aren't afraid of being judged by it, as evidenced by a series of Siri commercials featuring celebrities talking to their phones.

Turkle has a problem with this because these devices can only respond as if they understand what is being said.


AI-based gadgets, on the other hand, are confined to comprehending the literal meanings of data stored on the device.

They can decipher the contents of phone calendars and emails, but they have no idea what any of this data means to the user.

There is no discernible difference between a calendar appointment for car maintenance and one for chemotherapy for an AI-based device.

A person may lose sight of what it is to have an authentic dialogue with another human when entangled in a variety of these robotic connections with a growing number of technologies.


While Reclaiming Communication documents deteriorating conversation skills and decreasing empathy, it ultimately ends on a positive note.

Because people are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their relationships, there may be a chance for face-to-face human communication to reclaim its vital role.


Turkle's ideas focus on reducing the amount of time people spend on their phones, but AI's involvement in this interaction is equally critical.


  • Users must accept that their virtual assistant connections will never be able to replace face-to-face interactions.
  • This will necessitate being more deliberate in how one uses devices, prioritizing in-person interactions over the faster and easier interactions provided by AI-enabled devices.


~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

Find Jai on Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram


You may also want to read more about Artificial Intelligence here.



See also: 

Blade Runner; Chatbots and Loebner Prize; ELIZA; General and Narrow AI; Moral Turing Test; PARRY; Turing, Alan; 2001: A Space Odyssey.


References And Further Reading

  • Haugeland, John. 1997. “What Is Mind Design?” Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, edited by John Haugeland, 1–28. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Searle, John R. 1997. “Minds, Brains, and Programs.” Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, edited by John Haugeland, 183–204. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Turing, A. M. 1997. “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, edited by John Haugeland, 29–56. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.



Artificial Intelligence - What Is The Turing Test?

 



 

The Turing Test is a method of determining whether or not a machine can exhibit intelligence that mimics or is equivalent and likened to Human intelligence. 

The Turing Test, named after computer scientist Alan Turing, is an AI benchmark that assigns intelligence to any machine capable of displaying intelligent behavior comparable to that of a person.

Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (1950), which establishes a simple prototype—what Turing calls "The Imitation Game," is the test's locus classicus.

In this game, a person is asked to determine which of the two rooms is filled by a computer and which is occupied by another human based on anonymized replies to natural language questions posed by the judge to each inhabitant.

Despite the fact that the human respondent must offer accurate answers to the court's queries, the machine's purpose is to fool the judge into thinking it is human.





According to Turing, the machine may be considered intelligent to the degree that it is successful at this job.

The fundamental benefit of this essentially operationalist view of intelligence is that it avoids complex metaphysics and epistemological issues about the nature and inner experience of intelligent activities.

According to Turing's criteria, little more than empirical observation of outward behavior is required for predicting object intelligence.

This is in sharp contrast to the widely Cartesian epistemological tradition, which holds that some internal self-awareness is a need for intelligence.

Turing's method avoids the so-called "problem of other minds" that arises from such a viewpoint—namely, how to be confident of the presence of other intelligent individuals if it is impossible to know their thoughts from a presumably required first-person perspective.



Nonetheless, the Turing Test, at least insofar as it considers intelligence in a strictly formalist manner, is bound up with the spirit of Cartesian epistemol ogy.

The machine in the Imitation Game is a digital computer in the sense of Turing: a set of operations that may theoretically be implemented in any material.


A digital computer consists of three parts: a knowledge store, an executive unit that executes individual orders, and a control that regulates the executive unit.






However, as Turing points out, it makes no difference whether these components are created using electrical or mechanical means.

What matters is the formal set of rules that make up the computer's very nature.

Turing holds to the core belief that intellect is inherently immaterial.

If this is true, it is logical to assume that human intellect functions in a similar manner to a digital computer and may therefore be copied artificially.


Since Turing's work, AI research has been split into two camps: 


  1. those who embrace and 
  2. those who oppose this fundamental premise.


To describe the first camp, John Haugeland created the term "good old-fashioned AI," or GOFAI.

Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, Herbert Simon, Terry Winograd, and, most notably, Joseph Weizenbaum, whose software ELIZA was controversially hailed as the first to pass the Turing Test in 1966.



Nonetheless, detractors of Turing's formalism have proliferated, particularly in the past three decades, and GOFAI is now widely regarded as a discredited AI technique.

John Searle's Minds, Brains, and Programs (1980), in which Searle builds his now-famous Chinese Room thought experiment, is one of the most renowned criticisms of GOFAI in general—and the assumptions of the Turing Test in particular.





In the latter, a person with no prior understanding of Chinese is placed in a room and forced to correlate Chinese characters she receives with other Chinese characters she puts out, according to an English-scripted software.


Searle thinks that, assuming adequate mastery of the software, the person within the room may pass the Turing Test, fooling a native Chinese speaker into thinking she knew Chinese.

If, on the other hand, the person in the room is a digital computer, Turing-type tests, according to Searle, fail to capture the phenomena of understanding, which he claims entails more than the functionally accurate connection of inputs and outputs.

Searle's argument implies that AI research should take materiality issues seriously in ways that Turing's Imitation Game's formalism does not.

Searle continues his own explanation of the Chinese Room thought experiment by saying that human species' physical makeup—particularly their sophisticated nerve systems, brain tissue, and so on—should not be discarded as unimportant to conceptions of intelligence.


This viewpoint has influenced connectionism, an altogether new approach to AI that aims to build computer intelligence by replicating the electrical circuitry of human brain tissue.


The effectiveness of this strategy has been hotly contested, although it looks to outperform GOFAI in terms of developing generalized kinds of intelligence.

Turing's test, on the other hand, may be criticized not just from the standpoint of materialism, but also from the one of fresh formalism.





As a result, one may argue that Turing tests are insufficient as a measure of intelligence since they attempt to reproduce human behavior, which is frequently exceedingly dumb.


According to certain variants of this argument, if criteria of rationality are to distinguish rational from illogical human conduct in the first place, they must be derived a priori rather than from real human experience.

This line of criticism has gotten more acute as AI research has shifted its focus to the potential of so-called super-intelligence: forms of generalized machine intelligence that far outperform human intellect.


Should this next level of AI be attained, Turing tests would seem to be outdated.

Furthermore, simply discussing the idea of superintelligence would seem to need additional intelligence criteria in addition to severe Turing testing.

Turing may be defended against such accusation by pointing out that establishing a universal criterion of intellect was never his goal.



Indeed, according to Turing (1997, 29–30), the purpose is to replace the metaphysically problematic issue "can machines think" with the more empirically verifiable alternative: 

"What will happen when a computer assumes the role [of the man in the Imitation Game]" (Turing 1997, 29–30).


Thus, Turing's test's above-mentioned flaw—that it fails to establish a priori rationality standards—is also part of its strength and drive.

It also explains why, since it was initially presented three-quarters of a century ago, it has had such a lengthy effect on AI research in all domains.



~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

Find Jai on Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram


You may also want to read more about Artificial Intelligence here.



See also: 

Blade Runner; Chatbots and Loebner Prize; ELIZA; General and Narrow AI; Moral Turing Test; PARRY; Turing, Alan; 2001: A Space Odyssey.


References And Further Reading

Haugeland, John. 1997. “What Is Mind Design?” Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, edited by John Haugeland, 1–28. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Searle, John R. 1997. “Minds, Brains, and Programs.” Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, edited by John Haugeland, 183–204. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Turing, A. M. 1997. “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, edited by John Haugeland, 29–56. Cam￾bridge, MA: MIT Press.



Artificial Intelligence - Who Was Alan Turing?

 


 

 Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS(1912–1954) was a logician and mathematician from the United Kingdom.

He is known as the "Father of Artificial Intelligence" and "The Father of Computer Science." 

Turing earned a first-class honors degree in mathematics from King's College, Cambridge, in 1934.

Turing received his PhD from Princeton University after a fellowship at King's College, where he studied under American mathematician Alonzo Church.

Turing wrote numerous important publications during his studies, including "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem," which proved that the so-called "decision problem" had no solution.

The decision issue asks if there is a method for determining the correctness of any assertion inside a mathematical system.

This paper also explored a hypothetical Turing machine (basically an early computer) that, if represented by an algorithm, could execute any mathematical operation.


Turing is best known for his codebreaking work at Bletchley Park's Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) during World War II (1939–1945).

Turing's work at GC&CS included heading Hut 8, which was tasked with cracking the German Enigma and other very difficult naval encryption.

Turing's work undoubtedly shortened the war by years, saving millions of lives, but it is hard to measure with precision.

Turing wrote "The Applications of Probability to Cryptography" and "Paper on Statistics of Repetitions" during his tenure at GC&CS, both of which were held secret for seventy years by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) until being given to the UK National Archives in 2012.



Following WWII, Turing enrolled at the Victoria University of Manchester to study mathematical biology while continuing his work in mathematics, stored-program digital computers, and artificial intelligence.

Turing's 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" looked into artificial intelligence and introduced the concept of the Imitation Game (also known as the Turing Test), in which a human judge uses a set of written questions and responses to try to distinguish between a computer program and a human.

If the computer program imitates a person to the point that the human judge cannot discern the difference between the computer program's and the human's replies, the program has passed the test, indicating that it is capable of intelligent reasoning.


Turochamp, a chess program written by Turing and his colleague D.G. Champernowne, was meant to be executed by a computer, but no machine with adequate capacity existed to test the program.

Turing instead manually ran the algorithms to test the software.

Turing was well-recognized during his lifetime, despite the fact that most of his work remained secret until after his death.


Turing was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1951 and was awarded to the Order of the British Empire in 1946.(FRS).

The Turing Award, named after him, is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery for contributions to the area of computing.

The Turing Award, which comes with a $1 million reward, is commonly recognized as the Nobel Prize of Computing.


Turing was outspoken about his sexuality at a period when homosexuality was still illegal in the United Kingdom.

Turing was accused in 1952 under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 with "gross indecency." 

Turing was found guilty, granted probation, and was sentenced to a year of "chemical castration," in which he was injected with synthetic estrogen.


Turing's conviction had an influence on his career as well.


His security clearance was withdrawn, and he was compelled to stop working for the GCHQ as a cryptographer.

Following successful campaigning for an apology and pardon, the British government passed the Alan Turing bill in 2016, which retrospectively pardoned hundreds of persons imprisoned under Section 11 and other historical laws.


In 1954, Turing died of cyanide poisoning.

Turing's death may have been caused by inadvertent inhalation of cyanide vapors, despite the fact that it was officially considered a suicide.



~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

Find Jai on Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram


You may also want to read more about Artificial Intelligence here.



See also: 

Chatbots and Loebner Prize; General and Narrow AI; Moral Turing Test; Turing Test.


References And Further Reading

Hodges, Andrew. 2004. “Turing, Alan Mathison (1912–1954).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-36578.

Lavington, Simon. 2012. Alan Turing and His Contemporaries: Building the World’s First Computers. Swindon, UK: BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.

Sharkey, Noel. 2012. “Alan Turing: The Experiment that Shaped Artificial Intelligence.” BBC News, June 21, 2012. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18475646.



Artificial Intelligence - Who Is Aaron Sloman?

 




Aaron Sloman (1936–) is a renowned artificial intelligence and cognitive science philosopher.

He is a global expert in the evolution of biological information processing, an area of study that seeks to understand how animal species have acquired cognitive levels that surpass technology.

He's been debating if evolution was the first blind mathematician and whether weaver birds are actually capable of recursion in recent years (dividing a problem into parts to conquer it).

His present Meta-Morphogenesis Project is based on an idea by Alan Turing (1912–1954), who claimed that although computers could do mathematical brilliance, only brains could perform mathematical intuition.

According to Sloman, not every aspect of the cosmos, including the human brain, can be represented in a sufficiently massive digital computer because of this.

This assertion clearly contradicts digital physics, which claims that the universe may be characterized as a simulation running on a sufficiently big and fast general-purpose computer that calculates the cosmos's development.

Sloman proposes that the universe has developed its own biological building kits for creating and deriving other—different and more sophisticated—construction kits, similar to how scientists have evolved, accumulated, and applied increasingly complex mathematical knowledge via mathematics.

He refers to this concept as the Self-Informing Universe, and suggests that scientists build a multi-membrane Super-Turing machine that runs on subneural biological chemistry.

Sloman was born to Jewish Lithuanian immigrants in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

At the University of Cape Town, he got a bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Physics.

He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and earned his PhD in philosophy from Oxford University, where he defended Immanuel Kant's mathematical concepts.

He saw that artificial intelligence had promise as the way forward in philosophical understanding of the mind as a visiting scholar at Edinburgh University in the early 1970s.

He said that using Kant's recommendations as a starting point, a workable robotic toy baby could be created, which would eventually develop in intellect and become a mathematician on par with Archimedes or Zeno.

He was one of the first scholars to refute John McCarthy's claim that a computer program capable of operating intelligently in the real world must use structured, logic-based ideas.

Sloman was one of the founding members of the University of Sussex School of Cognitive and Computer Sciences.

There, he collaborated with Margaret Boden and Max Clowes to advance artificial intelligence instruction and research.

This effort resulted in the commercialization of the widely used Poplog AI teaching system.

Sloman's The Computer Revolution in Philosophy (1978) is famous for being one of the first to recognize that metaphors from the realm of computers (for example, the brain as a data storage device and thinking as a collection of tools) will dramatically alter how we think about ourselves.

The epilogue of the book contains observations on the near impossibility of AI sparking the Singularity and the likelihood of a human Society for the Liberation of Robots to address possible future brutal treatment of intelligent machines.

Sloman held the Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science chair in the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham until his formal retirement in 2002.

He is a member of the Alan Turing Institute and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.


~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

Find Jai on Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram


You may also want to read more about Artificial Intelligence here.



See also: 


Superintelligence; Turing, Alan.


References & Further Reading:


Sloman, Aaron. 1962. “Knowing and Understanding: Relations Between Meaning and Truth, Meaning and Necessary Truth, Meaning and Synthetic Necessary Truth.” D. Phil., Oxford University.

Sloman, Aaron. 1971. “Interactions between Philosophy and AI: The Role of Intuition and Non-Logical Reasoning in Intelligence.” Artificial Intelligence 2: 209–25.

Sloman, Aaron. 1978. The Computer Revolution in Philosophy: Philosophy, Science, and Models of Mind. Terrace, Hassocks, Sussex, UK: Harvester Press.

Sloman, Aaron. 1990. “Notes on Consciousness.” AISB Quarterly 72: 8–14.

Sloman, Aaron. 2018. “Can Digital Computers Support Ancient Mathematical Conscious￾ness?” Information 9, no. 5: 111.



Artificial Intelligence - General and Narrow Categories Of AI.






There are two types of artificial intelligence: general (or powerful or complete) and narrow (or limited) (or weak or specialized).

In the actual world, general AI, such as that seen in science fiction, does not yet exist.

Machines with global intelligence would be capable of completing every intellectual endeavor that humans are capable of.

This sort of system would also seem to think in abstract terms, establish connections, and communicate innovative ideas in the same manner that people do, displaying the ability to think abstractly and solve problems.



Such a computer would be capable of thinking, planning, and recalling information from the past.

While the aim of general AI has yet to be achieved, there are more and more instances of narrow AI.

These are machines that perform at human (or even superhuman) levels on certain tasks.

Computers that have learnt to play complicated games have abilities, techniques, and behaviors that are comparable to, if not superior to, those of the most skilled human players.

AI systems that can translate between languages in real time, interpret and respond to natural speech (both spoken and written), and recognize images have also been developed (being able to recognize, identify, and sort photos or images based on the content).

However, the ability to generalize knowledge or skills is still largely a human accomplishment.

Nonetheless, there is a lot of work being done in the field of general AI right now.

It will be difficult to determine when a computer develops human-level intelligence.

Several serious and hilarious tests have been suggested to determine whether a computer has reached the level of General AI.

The Turing Test is arguably the most renowned of these examinations.

A machine and a person speak in the background, as another human listens in.

The human eavesdropper must figure out which speaker is a machine and which is a human.

The machine passes the test if it can fool the human evaluator a prescribed percentage of the time.

The Coffee Test is a more fantastical test in which a machine enters a typical household and brews coffee.



It has to find the coffee machine, look for the coffee, add water, boil the coffee, and pour it into a cup.

Another is the Flat Pack Furniture Test, which involves a machine receiving, unpacking, and assembling a piece of furniture based only on the instructions supplied.

Some scientists, as well as many science fiction writers and fans, believe that once intelligent machines reach a tipping point, they will be able to improve exponentially.

AI-based beings that far exceed human capabilities might be one conceivable result.

The Singularity, or artificial superintelligence, is the point at which AI assumes control of its own self-improvement (ASI).

If ASI is achieved, it will have unforeseeable consequences for human society.

Some pundits worry that ASI would jeopardize humanity's safety and dignity.

It's up for dispute whether the Singularity will ever happen, and how dangerous it may be.

Narrow AI applications are becoming more popular across the globe.

Machine learning (ML) is at the heart of most new applications, and most AI examples in the news are connected to this subset of technology.

Traditional or conventional algorithms are not the same as machine learning programs.

In programs that cannot learn, a computer programmer actively adds code to account for every action of an algorithm.

All of the decisions made along the process are governed by the programmer's guidelines.

This necessitates the programmer imagining and coding for every possible circumstance that an algorithm may face.

This kind of program code is bulky and often inadequate, especially if it is updated frequently to accommodate for new or unanticipated scenarios.

The utility of hard-coded algorithms approaches its limit in cases where the criteria for optimum judgments are unclear or impossible for a human programmer to foresee.

Machine learning is the process of training a computer to detect and identify patterns via examples rather than predefined rules.



This is achieved, according to Google engineer Jason Mayes, by reviewing incredibly huge quantities of training data or participating in some other kind of programmed learning step.

New patterns may be extracted by processing the test data.

The system may then classify newly unknown data based on the patterns it has already found.

Machine learning allows an algorithm to recognize patterns or rules underlying decision-making processes on its own.

Machine learning also allows a system's output to improve over time as it gains more experience (Mayes 2017).

A human programmer continues to play a vital role in this learning process, influencing results by making choices like developing the exact learning algorithm, selecting the training data, and choosing other design elements and settings.

Machine learning is powerful once it's up and running because it can adapt and enhance its ability to categorize new data without the need for direct human interaction.

In other words, the output quality increases as the user gains experience.

Artificial intelligence is a broad word that refers to the science of making computers intelligent.

AI is a computer system that can collect data and utilize it to make judgments or solve issues, according to scientists.

Another popular scientific definition of AI is "a software program paired with hardware that can receive (or sense) inputs from the world around it, evaluate and analyze those inputs, and create outputs and suggestions without the assistance of a person." When programmers claim an AI system can learn, they're referring to the program's ability to change its own processes in order to provide more accurate outputs or predictions.

AI-based systems are now being developed and used in practically every industry, from agriculture to space exploration, and in applications ranging from law enforcement to online banking.

The methods and techniques used in computer science are always evolving, extending, and improving.

Other terminology linked to machine learning, such as reinforcement learning and neural networks, are important components of cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems.


Jai Krishna Ponnappan


You may also want to read more about Artificial Intelligence here.



See also: 

Embodiment, AI and; Superintelligence; Turing, Alan; Turing Test.


Further Reading:


Kelnar, David. 2016. “The Fourth Industrial Revolution: A Primer on Artificial Intelligence (AI).” Medium, December 2, 2016. https://medium.com/mmc-writes/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-a-primer-on-artificial-intelligence-ai-ff5e7fffcae1.

Kurzweil, Ray. 2005. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. New York: Viking.

Mayes, Jason. 2017. Machine Learning 101. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kSuQyW5DTnkVaZEjGYCkfOxvzCqGEFzWBy4e9Uedd9k/htmlpresent.

Müller, Vincent C., and Nick Bostrom. 2016. “Future Progress in Artificial Intelligence: A Survey of Expert Opinion.” In Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Vincent C. Müller, 553–71. New York: Springer.

Russell, Stuart, and Peter Norvig. 2003. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Samuel, Arthur L. 1988. “Some Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of Checkers I.” In Computer Games I, 335–65. New York: Springer.



What Is Artificial General Intelligence?

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is defined as the software representation of generalized human cognitive capacities that enables the ...