What exactly, though, is artificial intelligence? For most, AI may seem like a huge complicated concept that only scientists and engineers can understand. However, AI forms part of our growing field in day-to-day life but probably will be much larger in times to come.

In this article, we try to explain as simply as possible what Artificial Intelligence is and where it is currently applied. At the beginning, we tried to share with you why it is important to understand this technology field, especially when one is interested in an artificial intelligence course or learning this revolutionary technology.

What really is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence is that part of computer science related to the construction of machines that perform tasks in as similar a manner as possible to those things thought to require intelligence in humans. This may be simple speech and image recognition or complex problem-solving and making decisions. If some machine does something in such a way as to seem “smart” or “humanlike,” then more than likely it uses some sort of AI.

You are on messenger chatting with your friend, and you write some message with some typos on it. Then, auto-correct on that messenger knows what you have meant to type and changes it for you. Well, this is already an involvement of AI. It enables machines to “learn” from patterns in the data input they get, which improves their capabilities over time-and therefore their “intelligence”.

Simple Explanation of AI

Think of AI as a system that mimics human intelligence. It is supposed to perceive and reason and make adaptations so that it could solve complex problems or make decisions faster and more efficiently than one’s own capabilities. On the other hand, AI cannot think like a human or even genuinely understand, for that matter; rather, it is the process of thought that AI does that can make it practical and useful in certain tasks.

For instance, if one asks any of the virtual assistants, be it Siri or Google Assistant, about the weather outside; then, it uses AI to understand what you have said, processes that question, and comes up with an appropriate answer.

How Does Artificial Intelligence Work?

Once the processes involved in artificial intelligence are broken down, it is easier to conceptualize and understand:

Data Collection: The AI systems need data; hence, aplenty that any AI program may employ in its intention to “learn” as a first step toward the execution of certain tasks. These can be pictures, videos, texts, or numerical data.

Pattern recognition: This is where the AI system identifies the pattern in the data, which of course follows the gathering of the same. The reason pattern recognition is an important aspect is because it can relate to various kinds of information. It would mean, in pattern recognition, the visual data to find traffic lights, pedestrians, and other vehicles in a self-driving car.

That is to say, AI employs the use of machine learning, whereby the ability to learn is imparted on machines with increased accuracy over time. How an AI system is trained with large datasets of data so that it learns the pattern in the data and also makes predictions will be clearer; it gets better at performing its activities.

In the application of AI, it may be designed to make a decision based on what it has learned from those trends and patterns. For example, the recommendation system of an AI in a shopping website reads your past purchases and sells items you may like.

Types of Artificial Intelligence

There are two major types of artificial intelligence: narrow or weak AI and general or strong AI.

Narrow AI: Narrow AI is the form of AI alive today. Narrow AI performs particular functions, including recognizing faces or translating languages or playing chess. It doesn’t understand or learn other than what it’s doing. The voice assistants Siri and Alexa are examples of narrow AI.

General AI: Until now, this is a hypothetical form of AI that would be able to do any intellectual activity that a human being is capable of. The reasoning, problem-solving, and-as in humans-understanding of emotions would also be there. General AI may change the way all of us live and work one day. For the time being, however, it is a subject of science fiction.

Common Uses of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence has many applications; a few of them follow:

Smart Assistants: Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri use their Artificial Intelligence in understanding your voice commands and then responding to them.

Recommendation Systems: Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify use AI in recommending movies, videos, or music based on what you viewed or played earlier.

Healthcare: In the medical diagnosis, analysis of scans, and even development of tailored treatment, AI stands unrivaled.

Self-driving Cars: apply AI to negotiate and avoid obstructions while making driving decisions in real time.

Fraud Detection: Banks and other financial institutions do apply AI in fraud detection, and as such, manage to prevent fraudulent transactions.

Why Study Artificial Intelligence?

Interesting, fast-developing domain; it opens many jobs upon studying. A course in Artificial Intelligence thus equips one with the relevant skills for application in real-life projects on AI in fields such as technology and medicine to finance and even the creative arts.

Some of the reasons why one should study AI include the following:

There is great demand for professionals in AI because of the diversity of industries where it finds its adoption. The requirement for an AI engineer, a machine learning professional, and data scientists is hand in glove as companies progress with implementing AI into their systems.

Competitive Salaries: AI professionals enjoy the best salaries related to their line of work in the tech industry, owing to specialized skills. Needless to say, learning AI will pay very well in your career.

Innovative Opportunities: If interested in the development of state-of-the-art technologies, studying AI will set ground for innovation in various fields.

Positive Impact on Society: Improved health, better transportation, and AI can make a difference in solving some of our most critical problems. In this way, AI is one way to give back to society.

Artificial Intelligence Key Terms

Before you read about advanced topics or before taking an AI course here are some key terms you may hear:

ML: The sub-area of AI in which machines are able to learn from data and, over time, enhance their performance.

Deep Learning: A portion of machine learning involving the use of neural networks consisting of various layers, also proving to be quite efficient in jobs concerning picture and speech recognition.

Neural Networks: Models of the human brain that enable machines to detect patterns or structure in data.

It can be defined as: A sub-branch of the computer science that deals with the study of the interaction, interpretation, and generation of human language by computers.

Computer Vision: A field of AI where the emphasis is put on endowing machines with the ability for interpretation along with an understanding of visual information from the world.

How to Get Started Learning about Artificial Intelligence?

If you are keen enough and want to dive into artificial intelligence, here it is how to get started with it:

Enroll in an AI Course: Most online learning sites, colleges, and universities have courses in AI for the amateur, intermediate professionals, and advanced training. Choose that one which covers major subjects of machine learning, data analysis, and neural networking.

Try Them Out Yourself: There are a significant number of friendly AI tools which allow novices to try them out personally. Take TensorFlow, IBM Watson, or some of Google’s AI tools, and start fiddling around with machine learning and AI models.

Read and Keep Yourself Informed: AI is one of the most dynamic areas today-from news, reading books and articles, participation in AI communities would deepen the understanding.

Practical Experience with Real-World Data: You will understand how AI works in several applications; thus, working on projects will give you great confidence to build up your skill.

Artificial Intelligence-just the very sound of this might seem to imply some complicated science, but the very gist is simple: the art of carrying out tasks with machines that normally require human intelligence. AI is changing industries today, and with continuing evolution, so too will opportunities and challenges.

Whether it be in the quest to pursue an artificial intelligence course or simply for understanding what this area is all about, AI showcases the future of technology and what it can achieve. More importantly, with better understanding, one will be better prepared for the changes and even participate in shaping it with more knowledge of technology.