Origin
In the early 1950s Artificial Intelligence was already being created; for example, in 1955 Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon created the ‘Logic Theorist’ program which was designed to sort of mimic human problem-solving by using logic. It has actually proven different mathematical theorems.
In 1956, during a conference at Dartmouth College, the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ was coined by John McCarthy. At this time, a lot of researcher had already begun exploring the idea and possibility of creating intelligent machines.
Again in 1957, Allen Newell teamed up with Joseph Carl Shaw and Herbert A. Simon to create the ‘General Problem Solver’ (GPS) which was capable of solving a wide range of problems.
In the following decades, research on AI gained new grounds with the development of expert systems in 1970s and 1980s which were given specific tasks.
There is no doubt now that AI has really evolved a lot since the 1960s.
AI in everyday living
Since its incorporation to its development and rapid growth, Artificial intelligence is now everywhere and in everything we do; from Voice assistants on our phones and electronic devices, to self-driving cars, image recognition, music production, smart homes amongst others.
Here are a few applications of AI in the modern times
Voice Assistants
Goggle Assistant, Siri, Alexa and Bixby are a few of the notable voice assistants out there. These AI powered assistants reside in our smart speakers, smartphones and other ‘Smart’ devices. They are capable of performing various tasks, like setting reminders, answering questions, playing music – Google has gone as far as recognizing a sung just by hearing the users hum of said song, and even control devices they are synced with, they can turn on the lights, make coffee – kind of, turning on the vacuum cleaner and even Call your mom. Overall these voice assistants are e=very helpful in aiding our day-to-day activities.
Chatbots
After being a huge hit around 2022 to 2023, ChatGPT, an AI assisted chatbot was one of the biggest news over the internet. I actually did not know about AI powered chatbots prior; ChatGPT blew the minds of so many people as it had the ability to answer any question thrown its way and with its rapid growth, you could do almost anything with ChatGPT. Among these things are, write an essay for any given topic, solve complex math equations, interact with user by becoming anyone, for example, you could set it to become Elon Musk and from its database and knowledge, any question asked would be answered as though it was Elon Musk.
A lot of companies incorporated AI chatbots within this period, Microsoft even integrated a chatbot into Bing.
These chatbots are so good, that it’s almost impossible to know if any was written by them; I mean this blog post could have been written by an AI and you would not know ;)
Photography
From image generation to fine tuning, artificial intelligence seems to be coming for the art world. With just a few prompts you could create astonishing and mind blowing art works that would take an artist days or even weeks to accomplish. Apart from art works, realistic images can also be generated by AI, just give a prompt like ‘Cat on moon’ and within seconds you’d be greeted with a realistic looking image of a cat on the moon with only a few flaws indicating it is AI generated.
When it comes to fine tuning images AI is also remarkable, you could bring any old photo and AI will make it look like said picture was taken in recent times. Add colour to black and white photos, fix missing details in photos, morph your photo into anything (let your imagination be your limit), change background, all these things that were only accomplishable by a few who have studied the art of using Photoshop can now be done by anyone in possession of an image based AI.
Videos are not excluded either, AI came for everyone, although this area still isn’t the best with AI, I believe in a few years, the narrative would be totally different.
Music
On Youtube alone, there are tons of AI generated song. Remember ChatGPT? Well one of its capabilities is generating song lyrics, let’s say you generate these lyrics but don’t have a song yet, there are tons of music AI out there, just insert your lyrics, pick a beat and hit generate. In a matter of time, your song is readily available to fool anyone who comes across it – yeah this makes me mad.
It gets worse, there are songs out there, songs of artists, unreleased, unverified songs, songs that capture the essence of any artist, AI generated songs. For example, Eminem rapping GTA SA theme song or SpongeBob singing a popular song. These songs are becoming so good, that in a few years, any artist could be facing an unnecessary backlash from a song they did not sing
Voice Changer
Not just any regular voice changer that makes turns a male voice to an extremely unpleasant high pitched female voice, no. I am taking about an AI powered voice changer that can mimic almost any voice with just a few samples.
I was fooled once into believing an audio recording of a celebrity, not knowing I was listening to an AI generated recording.
Healthcare
Medical experts use AI to assist in diagnosis and medical research. AI can analyze medical data, like the record of patients to help in identifying patterns, detecting diseases and aid in make the right decision for treatment. Even Chatbots aid in this sector, as they can provide the right advice based on the works of other experts in the field for treating a specific ailment or disease.
Transportation
If you have not heard of self-driving cars, then you will read about them now. Google uses self-driving cars for getting street views for Google Maps. Other companies have created self-driving cars to aid in transportation, maybe you want to take your dad somewhere but are too busy to make it in time, get him a self-driving car and alleviate yourself from fear of any accidents on the road.
Apart from driving the car, AI has also been implemented in the car’s navigation system, this helps in preventing unwarranted accidents and also in picking the best route for your trip.
In conclusion
Although AI seems to be at its peak, it still has a long way to go before completely taking over our jobs and leaving us unemployed. As much as it has its advantages, AI also is disadvantageous in many ways, I might write an article on that.
It doesn’t really matter if you like the advent of AI of hate it; It doesn’t matter if you adore or abhor the idea; It doesn’t matter if you use or do not use AI, there is no denying the fact that AI has come to stay and will soon enough be in everything.