Artificial Intelligence (AI)

In 2011, IBM's Watson competed against Jeopardy's Expedition Match top champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Machine against Man in a $1 million match with Watson, the winner. Viewers were surprised and the techs behind the project were blown-away.

So what is Watson? He, it, is a “question answering machine," one that can understand questions posed in natural language and answer them with an audio response. What we didn't know was that Watson had spent years preparing for the big match. Watson was fed data and put through the paces, playing hundreds of games against past Jeopardy winners. Think of it as training to improve his chances of winning. Watson never exhibited emotion; he performed like a poker-face Texas Hold'em Champion. If you're not familiar with Jeopardy, contestants must have the ability to quickly untangle obscure statements, with the correct "what is" answer
A man in a suit is pressing a button with his finger.

AI & Business
A recent Forbes Magazine article discusses 4 Ways to Use Artificial Intelliegence in Business.

 

  1. Virtual Assistance. You've probably heard of or even used a Virtual Assistant. How do these two differ? A virtual assistant is a self-employed administrative or personal assistant, who works remotely for a number of clients. Virtual Assistance includes the use of chat bots to help people interact with technology
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  2. Insights. If you have a Facebook page, you've probably looked at insights for engagement, what's popular, etc. Through machine learning, billions of data points are collected and quickly analyzed.

  3. AI in labor, blue collar or white, is used to automate routine cognitive processes. Smart algorithms are beginning to replace junior lawyers for legal discovery and are used to do routine journalistic work, and summarizing financial reports.

  4. Unstructured Data. Here's an example of information an energy company may need to lay a gas pipeline. They need to know: what was previously built at this location; how the area was used; and problems history. A lot of this information might be found in old inspection reports and training manuals filed away in a binder or box. 

 

Art & Artificial Intelligence
We are intrigued with how AI was used to create art by a Master. Watch how Rembrandt was brought back to life to recreate his painting.


Will machine talent replace human talent?
It's unlikely. Artists express themselves through creative skills and imagination resulting in interesting and beautiful works of art ... paintings, sculptures, pottery, etc. The video above shows how data entry from an artist's work was able to replicate Rembrandt's original work of art. Would you consider this talent and imagination? Think about painters who mass produce copies of other artists' paintings. Through AI, a computer and printer produced a more accurate duplication. Perhaps in the not so far future, machines will develop some form of imagination and produce a work of art. We're not sure how you would program a machine to have artificial imagination. 

Wikipedia defines Artificial Imagination, also called synthetic imagination or machine imagination, as the artificial simulation of human imagination by general or special purpose computers or artificial neural networks.

Artifiicial Imagination is in its development stage. We're not surprised to learn that Google's artificial intelligence lab, DeepMind, is working to equip their AI with imagination. 

"If our algorithms are to develop equally sophisticated behaviors, they too must have the capability to ‘imagine’ and reason about the future." – Google

Is your job at risk?
Use this tool to find the odds of losing your job to a robot. (Yes, we realize it's pulling data from the UK, but the use of AI is global.)