artificial intelligence (AI)

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By

 Nicole Laskowski, Senior News Director

 Linda Tucci, Industry Editor -- CIO/IT Strategy

What is artificial intelligence (AI)?

Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by
machines, especially computer systems. Specific applications of AI
include expert systems, natural language processing, speech recognition
and machine vision.

How does AI work?

As the hype around AI has accelerated, vendors have been scrambling to
promote how their products and services use it. Often, what they refer to as AI
is simply a component of the technology, such as machine learning. AI
requires a foundation of specialized hardware and software for writing and
training machine learning algorithms. No single programming language is
synonymous with AI, but Python, R, Java, C++ and Julia have features
popular with AI developers.

In general, AI systems work by ingesting large amounts of labeled training

data, analyzing the data for correlations and patterns, and using these
patterns to make predictions about future states. In this way, a chatbot that is
fed examples of text can learn to generate lifelike exchanges with people, or
an image recognition tool can learn to identify and describe objects in images
by reviewing millions of examples. New, rapidly improving generative
AI techniques can create realistic text, images, music and other media.
AI programming focuses on cognitive skills that include the following:

 Learning. This aspect of AI programming focuses on acquiring data

and creating rules for how to turn it into actionable information. The
rules, which are called algorithms, provide computing devices with
step-by-step instructions for how to complete a specific task.

 Reasoning. This aspect of AI programming focuses on choosing the

right algorithm to reach a desired outcome.

 Self-correction. This aspect of AI programming is designed to

continually fine-tune algorithms and ensure they provide the most
accurate results possible.

 Creativity. This aspect of AI uses neural networks, rules-based

systems, statistical methods and other AI techniques to generate
new images, new text, new music and new ideas.

Differences between AI, machine learning and deep

learning

AI, machine learning and deep learning are common terms in enterprise IT and sometimes used

interchangeably, especially by companies in their marketing materials. But there are distinctions. The

term AI, coined in the 1950s, refers to the simulation of human intelligence by machines. It covers an

ever-changing set of capabilities as new technologies are developed. Technologies that come under the

umbrella of AI include machine learning and deep learning.

Machine learning enables software applications to become more accurate at predicting outcomes without

being explicitly programmed to do so. Machine learning algorithms use historical data as input to predict

new output values. This approach became vastly more effective with the rise of large data sets to train on.

Deep learning, a subset of machine learning, is based on our understanding of how the brain is

structured. Deep learning's use of artificial neural network structure is the underpinning of recent

advances in AI, including self-driving cars and ChatGPT.

Why is artificial intelligence important?
AI is important for its potential to change how we live, work and play. It has
been effectively used in business to automate tasks done by humans,
including customer service work, lead generation, fraud detection and quality
control. In a number of areas, AI can perform tasks much better than humans.
Particularly when it comes to repetitive, detail-oriented tasks, such as
analyzing large numbers of legal documents to ensure relevant fields are filled
in properly, AI tools often complete jobs quickly and with relatively few errors.
Because of the massive data sets it can process, AI can also give enterprises
insights into their operations they might not have been aware of. The rapidly
expanding population of generative AI tools will be important in fields ranging
from education and marketing to product design.

THIS ARTICLE IS PART OF

A guide to artificial intelligence in the enterprise

 Which also includes:
 10 top resources to build an ethical AI framework
 The future of AI: What to expect in the next 5 years
 12 key benefits of AI for business

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Indeed, advances in AI techniques have not only helped fuel an explosion in

efficiency, but opened the door to entirely new business opportunities for
some larger enterprises. Prior to the current wave of AI, it would have been
hard to imagine using computer software to connect riders to taxis, but Uber
has become a Fortune 500 company by doing just that.
AI has become central to many of today's largest and most successful
companies, including Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and Meta, where AI
technologies are used to improve operations and outpace competitors. At
Alphabet subsidiary Google, for example, AI is central to its search engine,
Waymo's self-driving cars and Google Brain, which invented the transformer
neural network architecture that underpins the recent breakthroughs in natural
language processing.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of artificial

intelligence?
Artificial neural networks and deep learning AI technologies are quickly
evolving, primarily because AI can process large amounts of data much faster
and make predictions more accurately than humanly possible.

While the huge volume of data created on a daily basis would bury a human
researcher, AI applications using machine learning can take that data and
quickly turn it into actionable information. As of this writing, a primary
disadvantage of AI is that it is expensive to process the large amounts of data
AI programming requires. As AI techniques are incorporated into more
products and services, organizations must also be attuned to AI's potential to
create biased and discriminatory systems, intentionally or inadvertently.

Advantages of AI

The following are some advantages of AI.

 Good at detail-oriented jobs. AI has proven to be just as good, if

not better than doctors at diagnosing certain cancers,
including breast cancer and melanoma.

 Reduced time for data-heavy tasks. AI is widely used in data-

heavy industries, including banking and securities, pharma and
insurance, to reduce the time it takes to analyze big data sets.
 Financial services, for example, routinely use AI to process loan
applications and detect fraud.

 Saves labor and increases productivity. An example here is the

use of warehouse automation, which grew during the pandemic and
is expected to increase with the integration of AI and machine
learning.

 Delivers consistent results. The best AI translation tools deliver

high levels of consistency, offering even small businesses the ability
to reach customers in their native language.

 Can improve customer satisfaction through personalization. AI

can personalize content, messaging, ads, recommendations and
websites to individual customers.

 AI-powered virtual agents are always available. AI programs do

not need to sleep or take breaks, providing 24/7 service.
Disadvantages of AI

The following are some disadvantages of AI.

 Expensive.

 Requires deep technical expertise.

 Limited supply of qualified workers to build AI tools.

 Reflects the biases of its training data, at scale.

 Lack of ability to generalize from one task to another.

 Eliminates human jobs, increasing unemployment rates.

Strong AI vs. weak AI
AI can be categorized as weak or strong.
  Weak AI, also known as narrow AI, is designed and trained to
complete a specific task. Industrial robots and virtual personal
assistants, such as Apple's Siri, use weak AI.

 Strong AI, also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI),

describes programming that can replicate the cognitive abilities of
the human brain. When presented with an unfamiliar task, a strong
AI system can use fuzzy logic to apply knowledge from one domain
to another and find a solution autonomously. In theory, a strong AI
program should be able to pass both a Turing test and the Chinese
Room argument.
What are the 4 types of artificial intelligence?
Arend Hintze, an assistant professor of integrative biology and computer
science and engineering at Michigan State University, explained that AI can
be categorized into four types, beginning with the task-specific intelligent
systems in wide use today and progressing to sentient systems, which do not
yet exist. The categories are as follows.

 Type 1: Reactive machines. These AI systems have no memory

and are task-specific. An example is Deep Blue, the IBM chess
program that beat Garry Kasparov in the 1990s. Deep Blue can
identify pieces on a chessboard and make predictions, but because it
has no memory, it cannot use past experiences to inform future ones.

 Type 2: Limited memory. These AI systems have memory, so they

can use past experiences to inform future decisions. Some of the
decision-making functions in self-driving cars are designed this way.

 Type 3: Theory of mind. Theory of mind is a psychology term.

When applied to AI, it means the system would have the social
intelligence to understand emotions. This type of AI will be able to
infer human intentions and predict behavior, a necessary skill for AI
systems to become integral members of human teams.
  Type 4: Self-awareness. In this category, AI systems have a sense
of self, which gives them consciousness. Machines with self-
awareness understand their own current state. This type of AI does
not yet exist.

DAVID PETERSSON

These are commonly described as the four main types of AI.

What are examples of AI technology and how is it used

today?
AI is incorporated into a variety of different types of technology. Here are
seven examples.

Automation. When paired with AI technologies, automation tools can expand

the volume and types of tasks performed. An example is robotic process
automation (RPA), a type of software that automates repetitive, rules-based
data processing tasks traditionally done by humans. When combined with
machine learning and emerging AI tools, RPA can automate bigger portions of
enterprise jobs, enabling RPA's tactical bots to pass along intelligence from AI
and respond to process changes.

Machine learning. This is the science of getting a computer to act without

programming. Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that, in very
simple terms, can be thought of as the automation of predictive analytics.
There are three types of machine learning algorithms:

 Supervised learning. Data sets are labeled so that patterns can be

detected and used to label new data sets.

 Unsupervised learning. Data sets aren't labeled and are sorted

according to similarities or differences.
  Reinforcement learning. Data sets aren't labeled but, after
performing an action or several actions, the AI system is given
feedback.

Machine vision. This technology gives a machine the ability to see. Machine
vision captures and analyzes visual information using a camera, analog-to-
digital conversion and digital signal processing. It is often compared to human
eyesight, but machine vision isn't bound by biology and can be programmed
to see through walls, for example. It is used in a range of applications from
signature identification to medical image analysis. Computer vision, which is
focused on machine-based image processing, is often conflated with machine
vision.

Natural language processing (NLP). This is the processing of human

language by a computer program. One of the older and best-known examples
of NLP is spam detection, which looks at the subject line and text of an email
and decides if it's junk. Current approaches to NLP are based on machine
learning. NLP tasks include text translation, sentiment analysis and speech
recognition.

Robotics. This field of engineering focuses on the design and manufacturing

of robots. Robots are often used to perform tasks that are difficult for humans
to perform or perform consistently. For example, robots are used in car
production assembly lines or by NASA to move large objects in space.
Researchers also use machine learning to build robots that can interact in
social settings.

Self-driving cars. Autonomous vehicles use a combination of computer

vision, image recognition and deep learning to build automated skills to pilot a
vehicle while staying in a given lane and avoiding unexpected obstructions,
such as pedestrians.
Text, image and audio generation. Generative AI techniques, which create
various types of media from text prompts, are being applied extensively
across businesses to create a seemingly limitless range of content types from
photorealistic art to email responses and screenplays.

AI is not just one technology.

What are the applications of AI?

Artificial intelligence has made its way into a wide variety of markets. Here are
11 examples.

AI in healthcare. The biggest bets are on improving patient outcomes and

reducing costs. Companies are applying machine learning to make better and
faster medical diagnoses than humans. One of the best-known healthcare
technologies is IBM Watson. It understands natural language and can
respond to questions asked of it. The system mines patient data and other
available data sources to form a hypothesis, which it then presents with a
confidence scoring schema. Other AI applications include using online virtual
health assistants and chatbots to help patients and healthcare customers find
medical information, schedule appointments, understand the billing process
and complete other administrative processes. An array of AI technologies is
also being used to predict, fight and understand pandemics such as COVID-
19.

AI in business. Machine learning algorithms are being integrated into

analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to uncover
information on how to better serve customers. Chatbots have been
incorporated into websites to provide immediate service to customers. The
rapid advancement of generative AI technology such as ChatGPT is expected
to have far-reaching consequences: eliminating jobs, revolutionizing product
design and disrupting business models.
AI in education. AI can automate grading, giving educators more time for
other tasks. It can assess students and adapt to their needs, helping them
work at their own pace. AI tutors can provide additional support to students,
ensuring they stay on track. The technology could also change where and
how students learn, perhaps even replacing some teachers. As demonstrated
by ChatGPT, Google Bard and other large language models, generative AI
can help educators craft course work and other teaching materials and
engage students in new ways. The advent of these tools also forces
educators to rethink student homework and testing and revise policies on
plagiarism.

AI in finance. AI in personal finance applications, such as Intuit Mint or

TurboTax, is disrupting financial institutions. Applications such as these collect
personal data and provide financial advice. Other programs, such as IBM
Watson, have been applied to the process of buying a home. Today, artificial
intelligence software performs much of the trading on Wall Street.

AI in law. The discovery process -- sifting through documents -- in law is often

overwhelming for humans. Using AI to help automate the legal industry's
labor-intensive processes is saving time and improving client service. Law
firms use machine learning to describe data and predict outcomes, computer
vision to classify and extract information from documents, and NLP to interpret
requests for information.

AI in entertainment and media. The entertainment business uses AI

techniques for targeted advertising, recommending content, distribution,
detecting fraud, creating scripts and making movies. Automated journalism
helps newsrooms streamline media workflows reducing time, costs and
complexity. Newsrooms use AI to automate routine tasks, such as data entry
and proofreading; and to research topics and assist with headlines. How
journalism can reliably use ChatGPT and other generative AI to generate
content is open to question.
AI in software coding and IT processes. New generative AI tools can be
used to produce application code based on natural language prompts, but it is
early days for these tools and unlikely they will replace software engineers
soon. AI is also being used to automate many IT processes, including data
entry, fraud detection, customer service, and predictive maintenance and
security.

Security. AI and machine learning are at the top of the buzzword list security
vendors use to market their products, so buyers should approach with caution.
Still, AI techniques are being successfully applied to multiple aspects of
cybersecurity, including anomaly detection, solving the false-positive
problem and conducting behavioral threat analytics. Organizations use
machine learning in security information and event management (SIEM)
software and related areas to detect anomalies and identify suspicious
activities that indicate threats. By analyzing data and using logic to identify
similarities to known malicious code, AI can provide alerts to new and
emerging attacks much sooner than human employees and previous
technology iterations.

AI in manufacturing. Manufacturing has been at the forefront of incorporating

robots into the workflow. For example, the industrial robots that were at one
time programmed to perform single tasks and separated from human workers,
increasingly function as cobots: Smaller, multitasking robots that collaborate
with humans and take on responsibility for more parts of the job in
warehouses, factory floors and other workspaces.

AI in banking. Banks are successfully employing chatbots to make their

customers aware of services and offerings and to handle transactions that
don't require human intervention. AI virtual assistants are used to improve and
cut the costs of compliance with banking regulations. Banking organizations
use AI to improve their decision-making for loans, set credit limits and identify
investment opportunities.
AI in transportation. In addition to AI's fundamental role in operating
autonomous vehicles, AI technologies are used in transportation to manage
traffic, predict flight delays, and make ocean shipping safer and more efficient.
In supply chains, AI is replacing traditional methods of forecasting demand
and predicting disruptions, a trend accelerated by COVID-19 when many
companies were caught off guard by the effects of a global pandemic on the
supply and demand of goods.

Augmented intelligence vs. artificial intelligence

Some industry experts have argued that the term artificial intelligence is too
closely linked to popular culture, which has caused the general public to have
improbable expectations about how AI will change the workplace and life in
general. They have suggested using the term augmented intelligence to
differentiate between AI systems that act autonomously -- popular culture
examples include Hal 9000 and The Terminator -- and AI tools that support
humans.

 Augmented intelligence. Some researchers and marketers hope

the label augmented intelligence, which has a more neutral
connotation, will help people understand that most implementations
of AI will be weak and simply improve products and services.
Examples include automatically surfacing important information in
business intelligence reports or highlighting important information in
legal filings. The rapid adoption of ChatGPT and Bard across
industry indicates a willingness to use AI to support human decision-
making.

 Artificial intelligence. True AI, or AGI, is closely associated with the

concept of the technological singularity -- a future ruled by
an artificial superintelligence that far surpasses the human brain's
ability to understand it or how it is shaping our reality. This remains
within the realm of science fiction, though some developers are
 working on the problem. Many believe that technologies such as
quantum computing could play an important role in making AGI a
reality and that we should reserve the use of the term AI for this kind
of general intelligence.
Ethical use of artificial intelligence
While AI tools present a range of new functionality for businesses, the use of
AI also raises ethical questions because, for better or worse, an AI system will
reinforce what it has already learned.

This can be problematic because machine learning algorithms, which

underpin many of the most advanced AI tools, are only as smart as the data
they are given in training. Because a human being selects what data is used
to train an AI program, the potential for machine learning bias is inherent and
must be monitored closely.

Anyone looking to use machine learning as part of real-world, in-production

systems needs to factor ethics into their AI training processes and strive to
avoid bias. This is especially true when using AI algorithms that are inherently
unexplainable in deep learning and generative adversarial network (GAN)
applications.

Explainability is a potential stumbling block to using AI in industries that

operate under strict regulatory compliance requirements. For example,
financial institutions in the United States operate under regulations that
require them to explain their credit-issuing decisions. When a decision to
refuse credit is made by AI programming, however, it can be difficult to explain
how the decision was arrived at because the AI tools used to make such
decisions operate by teasing out subtle correlations between thousands of
variables. When the decision-making process cannot be explained, the
program may be referred to as black box AI.

In summary, AI's ethical challenges include the following:

  Bias due to improperly trained algorithms and human bias.

 Misuse due to deepfakes and phishing.

 Legal concerns, including AI libel and copyright issues.

 Elimination of jobs due to the growing capabilities of AI.

 Data privacy concerns, particularly in the banking, healthcare and

legal fields.

These
components make up responsible AI use.
AI governance and regulations
Despite potential risks, there are currently few regulations governing the use
of AI tools, and where laws do exist, they typically pertain to AI indirectly. For
example, as previously mentioned, U.S. Fair Lending regulations require
financial institutions to explain credit decisions to potential customers. This
limits the extent to which lenders can use deep learning algorithms, which by
their nature are opaque and lack explainability.

The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is

considering AI regulations. GDPR's strict limits on how enterprises can use
consumer data already limits the training and functionality of many consumer-
facing AI applications.

Policymakers in the U.S. have yet to issue AI legislation, but that could
change soon. A "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights" published in October 2022
by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) guides
businesses on how to implement ethical AI systems. The U.S. Chamber of
Commerce also called for AI regulations in a report released in March 2023.

Crafting laws to regulate AI will not be easy, in part because AI comprises a

variety of technologies that companies use for different ends, and partly
because regulations can come at the cost of AI progress and development.
The rapid evolution of AI technologies is another obstacle to forming
meaningful regulation of AI, as are the challenges presented by AI's lack of
transparency that make it difficult to see how the algorithms reach their
results. Moreover, technology breakthroughs and novel applications such as
ChatGPT and Dall-E can make existing laws instantly obsolete. And, of
course, the laws that governments do manage to craft to regulate AI don't stop
criminals from using the technology with malicious intent.
had a long and sometimes controversial history from the Turing test in 1950 to today's