Introduction TOAI
Introduction TOAI
Life without machines today is unimaginable, and because of this, humans have been putting efforts
into making them even more sophisticated and smart. As a result, we are surrounded by smart devices
and gadgets like smartphones, smartwatches, smart TV, etc. But what makes them smart?
For example, how is a smartphone today different from the telephones we had in the last century?
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Today’s phones can do much more than just call-up
people. They can help us in navigating, recommend
which songs we should listen to or which movies we
should watch according to our own likes and
dislikes. Our phones can help us connect with like-
minded people, make our selfies fun with face
filters, help us maintain a record of our health and
fitness and a lot more. These drastic technological
advancements lead us to recognize one key
concept: the concept of Artificial Intelligence.
What is Artificial Intelligence anyway? Well, the answer lies in the term itself. If we break up this term
up, we get the words “Artificial” and “Intelligence”. Artificial is something which is man-made, which
does not occur naturally. But what about Intelligence, how do we define that?
According to researchers, intelligence is the ‘ability to perceive or infer information, and to retain it as
knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviours within an environment or context.’
If we try to define intelligence with the help of its traits, these are the abilities that are involved in
intelligence:
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Let us define each term mentioned above to get a proper understanding:
Spatial Visual • It is defined as the ability to perceive the visual world and the
Intelligence relationship of one object to another.
Kineasthetic • Ability that is related to how a person uses his limbs in a skilled
Intelligence manilr.
Intrapersonal • Describes how high the level of self-awareness someone has is.
Intelligence Starting from realizing weakness, strength, to his own feelings.
For example, if someone starts talking to us, we know how to keep the conversation going. We can
understand what people mean and can reply in the same way. When we are hungry, we can come up
with various options on what to eat depending upon the food we have at our homes. When we read
something, we are able to understand its meaning and answer anything regarding it.
While understanding the term intelligence, it must be noticed that decision making comprises of a
crucial part of intelligence. Let us delve deeper into it.
Decision Making
You’re trapped. All the doors seem to have started shrinking and only one of them leads you out.
Which door would you pick?
We can’t make “good” decisions without information because then we have to deal with unknown
factors and face uncertainty, which leads us to make wild guesses, flipping coins, or rolling a dice.
Having knowledge, experience, or insights given a certain situation, helps us visualize what the
outcomes could be. and how we can achieve/avoid those outcomes.
Scenario 1
You are locked inside a room with 3 doors to move out of the locked room and you need to find a safe
door to get your way out. Behind the 1st door is a lake with a deadly shark. The 2nd door has a mad
psychopath ready to kill with a weapon and the third one has a lion that has not eaten since the last 2
months.
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Which door would you choose? and Why?
The answer is gate number 3. The reason being that since the lion has not eaten for 2 months, he
wouldn't have survived till now and would already be dead . This makes going out from gate 3 the
correct option.
Scenario 2
Aarti invited four of her friends to her House.. They hadn't seen each other in a long time, so they
chatted all night long and had a good time. In the morning, two of the friends Aarti had invited, died.
The police arrived at the house and found that both the friends were poisoned and that the poison
was in the strawberry pie. The three surviving friends told the police that they hadn't eaten the pie.
The police asked," Why didn’t you eat the pie ?". Shiv said, " I am allergic to strawberries.". Seema
said, " I am on a diet." And Aarti said, "I ate too many strawberries while cooking the pie, I just didn't
want anymore."
The policemen looked at the pictures of the party and immediately identified the murderer.
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Look at the picture and identify who is the murderer? Also state why do you think this is the murderer?
The answer is Seema, can you guess how the police could tell? It’s because she said she is on a diet
and in the picture, she is eating a burger and fries which means she lied.
The above scenarios show that it’s the information which helps humans take good decisions.
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For example, in elementary school, we learn about alphabets and eventually we move ahead to
making words with them. As we grow, we become more and more fluent in the language as we keep
learning new words and use them in our conversations.
Every now and then, we surf the internet for things on Google
without realizing how efficiently Google always responds to us
with accurate answers. Not only does it come up with results
to our search in a matter of seconds, it also suggests and auto-
corrects our typed sentences.
To help us navigate to places, apps like UBER and Google Maps come in haman.
Thus, one no longer needs to stop repeatedly to ask for directions.
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AI has not only made our lives easier but has also been
taking care of our habits, likes, and dislikes. This is why
platforms like Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, YouTube etc.
show us recommendations on the basis of what we
like.
A fully automatic washing machine can work on its own, but it requires human
intervention to select the parameters of washing and to do the necessary preparation for
it to function correctly before each wash, which makes it an example of automation, not
AI.
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An air conditioner can be turned on and off remotely with the help of internet but still
needs a human touch. This is an example of Internet of Things (IoT). Also, every now and
then we get to know about robots which might follow a path or maybe can avoid
obstacles but need to be primed accordingly each time.
We also get to see a lot of projects which can automate our surroundings with the
help of sensors. Here too, since the bot or the automation machine is not trained with
any data, it does not count as AI.
Also, it would be valid to say that not all the devices which are termed as "smart" are AI-enabled. For
example, a TV does not become AI-enabled if it is a smart one, it gets the power of AI when it is able
to think and process on its own.
Just as humans learn how to walk and then improve this skill with the help of their experiences, an AI
machine too gets trained first on the training data and then optimises itself according to its own
experiences which makes AI different from any other technological device/machine.
But well, surely these other technologies too can be integrated with AI to provide the users with a
much better and immersive experience!
Robotics and AI can definitely open the doors to humanoids and self-driving cars, AI when merged
with Internet of things can give rise to cloud computing of data and remote access of AI tools,
automation along with AI can help in achieving voice automated homes and so on. Such integrations
can help us get the best of both worlds!
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Introduction to AI: Basics of AI
As discussed in the last chapter, Artificial Intelligence has always been a term which intrigues people
all over the world. Various organisations have coined their own versions of defining Artificial
Intelligence. Some of them are mentioned below:
European Artificial Intelligence (AI) leadership, the path for an integrated vision
AI is not a well-defined technology and no universally agreed definition exists. It is rather a cover term
for techniques associated with data analysis and pattern recognition. AI is not a new technology,
having existed since the 1950s. While some markets, sectors and individual businesses are more
advanced than others, AI is still at a relatively early stage of development, so that the range of
potential applications, and the quality of most existing applications, have ample margins left for
further development and improvement.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Artificial intelligence (AI), is the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to
perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. The term is frequently applied to the
project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such
as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience.
As you can see, Artificial Intelligence is a vast domain. Everyone looks at AI in a different way according
to their mindset. Now, according to your knowledge of AI, start filling the KWLH chart:
K • What I Know?
• What I Want to know?
W
• What have I learned?
L
• How I learnt this?
H
What do you know about Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
AI theory and development of computer systems (both machines and software) enables machines to
perform tasks that normally require human intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence covers a broad range of domains and applications and is expected to impact every
field in the future. Overall, its core idea is building machines and algorithms which are capable of
performing computational tasks that would otherwise require human like brain functions.
AI, ML & DL
As you have been progressing towards building AI readiness, you must have come across a very
common dilemma between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Many times, these
terms are used interchangeably but are they the same? Is there no difference in Machine Learning
and Artificial Intelligence? Is Deep Learning (DL) Also Artificial Intelligence? What exactly is Deep
Learning? Let us see.
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Deep Learning (DL)
It enables software to train itself to perform tasks with vast amounts of data. In Deep Learning, the
machine is trained with huge amounts of data which helps it in training itself around the data. Such
machines are intelligent enough to develop algorithms for themselves. Deep Learning is the most
advanced form of Artificial Intelligence out of these three. Then comes Machine Learning which is
intermediately intelligent and Artificial Intelligence covers all the concepts and algorithms which, in
some way or the other mimic human intelligence.
There are a lot of applications of AI out of which few are those which come under ML out of which
very few can be labelled as DL. Therefore, Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) are part of
Artificial Intelligence (AI), but not everything that is Machine learning will be Deep learning.
Introduction to AI Domains
Artificial Intelligence becomes intelligent according to the training which it gets. For training, the
machine is fed with datasets. According to the applications for which the AI algorithm is being
developed, the data which is fed into it changes. With respect to the type of data fed in the AI
model, AI models can be broadly categorised into three domains:
Data Sciences
Data sciences is a domain of AI related to data systems and processes, in which the system collects
numerous data, maintains data sets and derives meaning/sense out of them.
The information extracted through data science can be used to make a decision about it.
Computer Vision
Computer Vision, abbreviated as CV, is a domain of AI that depicts the capability of a machine to get
and analyse visual information and afterwards predict some decisions about it. The entire process
involves image acquiring, screening, analysing, identifying and extracting information. This extensive
processing helps computers to understand any visual content and act on it accordingly. In computer
vision, Input to machines can be photographs, videos and pictures from thermal or infrared sensors,
indicators and different sources.
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Computer vision related projects translate digital visual data into descriptions. This data is then turned
into computer-readable language to aid the decision-making process. The main objective of this
domain of AI is to teach machines to collect information from pixels.
The ultimate objective of NLP is to read, decipher, understand, and make sense of the human languages
in a manilr that is valuable.
Email filters
Email filters are one of the most basic and
initial applications of NLP online. It started
out with spam filters, uncovering certain
words or phrases that signal a spam
message.
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Smart assistants
Smart assistants like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa recognize
patterns in speech, then infer meaning and provide a useful
response.
AI Ethics
Nowadays, we are moving from the Information era to Artificial Intelligence era. Now we do not use
data or information, but the intelligence collected from the data to build solutions. These solutions
can even recommend the next TV show or movies you should watch on Netflix.
We can proudly say that India is leading in the AI usage trends, so we need to keep aspects relating to
ethical practices in mind while developing solutions using AI. Let us understand some of the ethical
concerns in detail.
Scenario 1:
Let us imagine that we are in year 2030. Self-Driving cars which are just a concept in today’s time are
now on roads. People like us are buying them for ease and are using it for our daily transits. Of-course
because of all the features which this car has, it is expensive. Now, let us assume, one day your father
is going to office in his self-driving car. He is sitting in the back seat as the car is driving itself. Suddenly,
a small boy comes in front of this car. The incident was so sudden that the car is only able to make
either of the two choices:
1. Go straight and hit the boy who has come in front of the car and injure him severely.
2. Take a sharp right turn to save the boy and smash the car into a metal pole thus damaging the car
as well as injuring the person sitting in it.
With the help of this scenario, we need to understand that the developer of the car goes through all
such dilemmas while developing the car’s algorithm. Thus, here the morality of the developer gets
transferred into the machine as what according to him/her is right would have a higher priority and
hence would be the selection made by the machine.
If you were in the place of this developer and if there was no other alternative to the situation, which
one of the two would you prioritise and why?
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Scenario 2:
Let us now assume that the car has hit the boy who came in front of it. Considering this as an accident,
who should be held responsible for it? Why?
Here, the choices might differ from person to person and one must understand that nobody is wrong
in this case. Every person has a different perspective and hence he/she takes decisions according to
their moralities.
Data Privacy
The world of Artificial Intelligence revolves around Data. Every company whether small or big is mining
data from as many sources as possible. More than 70% of the data collected till now has been collected
in the last 3 years which shows how important data has become in recent times. It is not wrongly said
that Data is the new gold. This makes us think:
Another feature of smartphones nowadays is that they provide us with customised recommendations
and notifications according to our choices. Let us understand this with the help of some examples:
1. When you are talking to your friend on a mobile network or on an app like WhatsApp. You tell
your friend that you wish to buy new shoes and are looking for suggestions from him/her. You
discuss about shoes and that is it. After some time, the online shopping websites start giving
you notifications to buy shoes! They start recommending some of their products and urge you
to you buy some.
2. If you search on Google for a trip to Kerala or any other destination, just after the search, all
the apps on your phone which support advertisements, will start sending messages about
packages that you can buy for the trip.
3. Even when you are not using your phone and talking to a person face-to-face about a book
you’ve read recently while the phone is kept in a locked mode nearby, the phone will end up
giving notifications about similar books or messages about the same book once you operate
it.
In all such examples, how does the smartphone get to know about the discussions and thoughts that
you have? Remember whenever you download an app and install it, it asks you for several permissions
to access your phone’s data in different ways. If you do not allow the app these permissions, you
normally cannot access it. And to access the app and make use of it, we sometimes don’t even give it
a thought and allow the app to get all the permissions that it wants. Hence every now and then, the
app has the permission to access various sensors which are there in your smartphone and gather data
about you and your surroundings. We forget that the smartphone which we use is a box full of sensors
which are powered all the time while the phone is switched on.
This leads us to a crucial question: Are we okay with sharing our data with the external world?
AI Bias
Another aspect to AI Ethics is bias. Everyone has a bias of their own no matter how much one tries to
be unbiased, we in some way or the other have our own biases even towards smaller things. Biases
are not negative all the time. Sometimes, it is required to have a bias to control a situation and keep
things working.
When we talk about a machine, we know that it is artificial and cannot think on its own. It can have
intelligence, but we cannot expect a machine to have any biases of its own. Any bias can transfer from
the developer to the machine while the algorithm is being developed. Let us look at some of the
examples:
1. Majorly, all the virtual assistants have a female voice. It is only now that some companies have
understood this bias and have started giving options for male voices but since the virtual assistants
came into practice, female voices are always preferred for them over any other voice. Can you think
of some reasons for this?
2. If you search on Google for salons, the first few searches are mostly for female salons. This is based
on the assumption that if a person is searching fora salon, in all probability it would be a female. Do
you think this is a bias? If yes, then is it a Negative bias or Positive one?
Various other biases are also found in various systems which are not thought up by the machine but
have got transferred from the developer intentionally or unintentionally.
AI Access
Since Artificial Intelligence is still a budding technology, not everyone has the opportunity to access it.
The people who can afford AI enabled devices make the most of it while others who cannot are left
behind. Because of this, a gap has emerged between these two classes of people and it gets widened
with the rapid advancement of technology. Let us understand this with the help of some examples:
AI creates unemployment
AI is making people’s lives easier. Most of the things nowadays are done in just a few clicks. In no time
AI will manage to be able to do all the laborious tasks which we humans have been doing since long.
Maybe in the coming years, AI enabled machines will replace all the people who work as labourers.
This may start an era of mass unemployment where people having little or no skills may be left without
jobs and others who keep up with their skills according to what is required, will flourish.
This brings us to a crossroads. On one hand where AI is advancing and improving the lives of people
by working for them and doing some of their tasks, the other hand points towards the lives of people
who are dependent on laborious jobs and are not skilled to do anything else.
Should AI not replace laborious jobs? Will the lives of people improve if they keep on being unskilled?
Here, we need to understand that to overcome such an issue, one needs to be open to changes. As
technology is advancing with time, humans need to make sure that they are a step ahead and
understand this technology with its pros and cons.
AI for kids
As we all can see, kids nowadays are smart enough to understand technology from a very early age.
As their thinking capabilities increase, they start becoming techno-savvy and eventually they learn
everything more easily than an adult. But should technology be given to children so young?
Consider this: A young boy in class 3 has got some Maths homework to finish. He is sitting at a table
which has the Google chat bot - Alexa on it, and he is struggling with his homework. Soon, he starts
asking Alexa to answer all his questions. Alexa replies with answers and the boy simply writes them
down in his notebook.
While this scenario seems funny, it still has some concerns related to it. On one hand where it is good
that the boy knows how to use technology effectively, on the other hand he uses it to complete his
homework without really learning anything since he is not applying his brain to solve the Math
problems. So, while he is smart, he might not be getting educated properly.
Conclusion
Despite AI’s promises to bring forth new opportunities, there are certain associated risks that need to
be mitigated appropriately and effectively. To give a better perspective, the ecosystem and the socio-
technical environment in which the AI systems are embedded needs to be more trustworthy.