What is artificial intelligence?

(Source: https://www.ibm.com//topics/artificial-intelligence)

While a number of definitions of artificial intelligence (AI) have surfaced over the last
few decades, John McCarthy offers the following definition in this 2004 paper (link resides
outside ibm.com), " It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines,
especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers
to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are
biologically observable."

However, decades before this definition, the birth of the artificial intelligence
conversation was denoted by Alan Turing's seminal work, "Computing Machinery and
Intelligence"(link resides outside ibm.com), which was published in 1950. In this paper,
Turing, often referred to as the "father of computer science", asks the following question,
"Can machines think?" From there, he offers a test, now famously known as the "Turing
Test", where a human interrogator would try to distinguish between a computer and human
text response. While this test has undergone much scrutiny since its publish, it remains an
important part of the history of AI as well as an ongoing concept within philosophy as it
utilizes ideas around linguistics.

Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig then proceeded to publish, Artificial Intelligence: A
Modern Approach (link resides outside ibm.com), becoming one of the leading textbooks in
the study of AI. In it, they delve into four potential goals or definitions of AI, which
differentiates computer systems on the basis of rationality and thinking vs. acting:

Human approach:

● Systems that think like humans

● Systems that act like humans
● Ideal approach:

● Systems that think rationally

● Systems that act rationally
● Alan Turing’s definition would have fallen under the category of “systems that act like
humans.”

At its simplest form, artificial intelligence is a field, which combines computer science
and robust datasets, to enable problem-solving. It also encompasses sub-fields of machine
learning and deep learning, which are frequently mentioned in conjunction with artificial
intelligence. These disciplines are comprised of AI algorithms which seek to create expert
systems which make predictions or classifications based on input data.
 Over the years, artificial intelligence has gone through many cycles of hype, but even
to skeptics, the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT seems to mark a turning point. The last time
generative AI loomed this large, the breakthroughs were in computer vision, but now the leap
forward is in natural language processing. And it’s not just language: Generative models can
also learn the grammar of software code, molecules, natural images, and a variety of other
data types.

The applications for this technology are growing every day, and we’re just starting to
explore the possibilities. But as the hype around the use of AI in business takes off,
conversations around ethics become critically important. To read more on where IBM stands
within the conversation around AI ethics, read more here.

Types of artificial intelligence—weak AI vs. strong AI

Weak AI—also called Narrow AI or Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)—is AI
trained and focused to perform specific tasks. Weak AI drives most of the AI that surrounds
us today. ‘Narrow’ might be a more accurate descriptor for this type of AI as it is anything
but weak; it enables some very robust applications, such as Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa,
IBM watson, and autonomous vehicles.

Strong AI is made up of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Super

Intelligence (ASI). Artificial general intelligence (AGI), or general AI, is a theoretical form of
AI where a machine would have an intelligence equaled to humans; it would have a
self-aware consciousness that has the ability to solve problems, learn, and plan for the future.
Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)—also known as superintelligence—would surpass the
intelligence and ability of the human brain. While strong AI is still entirely theoretical with
no practical examples in use today, that doesn't mean AI researchers aren't also exploring its
development. In the meantime, the best examples of ASI might be from science fiction, such
as HAL, the superhuman, rogue computer assistant in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Deep learning vs. machine learning

Since deep learning and machine learning tend to be used interchangeably, it’s worth
noting the nuances between the two. As mentioned above, both deep learning and machine
learning are sub-fields of artificial intelligence, and deep learning is actually a sub-field of
machine learning.

Deep learning is actually comprised of neural networks. “Deep” in deep learning

refers to a neural network comprised of more than three layers—which would be inclusive of
the inputs and the output—can be considered a deep learning algorithm. This is generally
represented using the diagram below.
 The way in which deep learning and machine learning differ is in how each algorithm
learns. Deep learning automates much of the feature extraction piece of the process,
eliminating some of the manual human intervention required and enabling the use of larger
data sets. You can think of deep learning as "scalable machine learning" as Lex Fridman
noted in same MIT lecture from above. Classical, or "non-deep", machine learning is more
dependent on human intervention to learn. Human experts determine the hierarchy of features
to understand the differences between data inputs, usually requiring more structured data to
learn.

"Deep" machine learning can leverage labeled datasets, also known as supervised
learning, to inform its algorithm, but it doesn’t necessarily require a labeled dataset. It can
ingest unstructured data in its raw form (e.g. text, images), and it can automatically determine
the hierarchy of features which distinguish different categories of data from one another.
Unlike machine learning, it doesn't require human intervention to process data, allowing us to
scale machine learning in more interesting ways.

The rise of generative models

Generative AI refers to deep-learning models that can take raw data — say, all of
Wikipedia or the collected works of Rembrandt — and “learn” to generate statistically
probable outputs when prompted. At a high level, generative models encode a simplified
representation of their training data and draw from it to create a new work that’s similar,
but not identical, to the original data.

Generative models have been used for years in statistics to analyze numerical data.
The rise of deep learning, however, made it possible to extend them to images, speech, and
other complex data types. Among the first class of models to achieve this cross-over feat were
variational autoencoders, or VAEs, introduced in 2013. VAEs were the first deep-learning
models to be widely used for generating realistic images and speech.

“VAEs opened the floodgates to deep generative modeling by making models easier to
scale,” said Akash Srivastava, an expert on generative AI at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab.
“Much of what we think of today as generative AI started here.”

Early examples of models, like GPT-3, BERT, or DALL-E 2, have shown what’s
possible. The future is models that are trained on a broad set of unlabeled data that can be
used for different tasks, with minimal fine-tuning. Systems that execute specific tasks in a
single domain are giving way to broad AI that learns more generally and works across
domains and problems. Foundation models, trained on large, unlabeled datasets and
fine-tuned for an array of applications, are driving this shift.

When it comes to generative AI, it is predicted that foundation models will

dramatically
accelerate AI adoption in enterprise. Reducing labeling requirements will make it much
easier for businesses to dive in, and the highly accurate, efficient AI-driven automation they
enable will mean that far more companies will be able to deploy AI in a wider range of
mission-critical situations. For IBM, the hope is that the power of foundation models can
eventually be brought to every enterprise in a frictionless hybrid-cloud environment.

Artificial intelligence applications

There are numerous, real-world applications of AI systems today. Below are some of
the most common use cases:

● Speech recognition: It is also known as automatic speech recognition (ASR),

computer speech recognition, or speech-to-text, and it is a capability which uses
natural language processing (NLP) to process human speech into a written format.
Many mobile devices incorporate speech recognition into their systems to conduct
voice search—e.g. Siri—or provide more accessibility around texting.
● Customer service: Online virtual agents are replacing human agents along the
customer journey. They answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) around topics, like
shipping, or provide personalized advice, cross-selling products or suggesting sizes
for users, changing the way we think about customer engagement across websites and
social media platforms. Examples include messaging bots on e-commerce sites with
virtual agents, messaging apps, such as Slack and Facebook Messenger, and tasks
usually done by virtual assistants and voice assistants.
● Computer vision: This AI technology enables computers and systems to derive
meaningful information from digital images, videos and other visual inputs, and based
on those inputs, it can take action. This ability to provide recommendations
distinguishes it from image recognition tasks. Powered by convolutional neural
networks, computer vision has applications within photo tagging in social media,
radiology imaging in healthcare, and self-driving cars within the automotive industry.
● Recommendation engines: Using past consumption behavior data, AI algorithms can
help to discover data trends that can be used to develop more effective cross-selling
strategies. This is used to make relevant add-on recommendations to customers during
the checkout process for online retailers.
● Automated stock trading: Designed to optimize stock portfolios, AI-driven
high-frequency trading platforms make thousands or even millions of trades per day
without human intervention.

History of artificial intelligence: Key dates and names

The idea of 'a machine that thinks' dates back to ancient Greece. But since the advent
of electronic computing (and relative to some of the topics discussed in this article) important
events and milestones in the evolution of artificial intelligence include the following:
 ● 1950: Alan Turing publishes Computing Machinery and Intelligence. In the paper,
Turing—famous for breaking the Nazi's ENIGMA code during WWII—proposes to
answer the question 'can machines think?' and introduces the Turing Test to determine
if a computer can demonstrate the same intelligence (or the results of the same
intelligence) as a human. The value of the Turing test has been debated ever since.
● 1956: John McCarthy coins the term 'artificial intelligence' at the first-ever AI
conference at Dartmouth College. (McCarthy would go on to invent the Lisp
language.) Later that year, Allen Newell, J.C. Shaw, and Herbert Simon create the
Logic Theorist, the first-ever running AI software program.
● 1967: Frank Rosenblatt builds the Mark 1 Perceptron, the first computer based on a
neural network that 'learned' though trial and error. Just a year later, Marvin Minsky
and Seymour Papert publish a book titled Perceptrons, which becomes both the
landmark work on neural networks and, at least for a while, an argument against
future neural network research projects.
● 1980s: Neural networks which use a backpropagation algorithm to train itself become
widely used in AI applications.
● 1997: IBM's Deep Blue beats then world chess champion Garry Kasparov, in a chess
match (and rematch).
● 2011: IBM watson beats champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter at Jeopardy!
● 2015: Baidu's Minwa supercomputer uses a special kind of deep neural network called
a convolutional neural network to identify and categorize images with a higher rate of
accuracy than the average human.
● 2016: DeepMind's AlphaGo program, powered by a deep neural network, beats Lee
Sodol, the world champion Go player, in a five-game match. The victory is significant
given the huge number of possible moves as the game progresses (over 14.5 trillion
after just four moves!). Later, Google purchased DeepMind for a reported USD 400
million.
● 2023: A rise in large language models, or LLMs, such as ChatGPT, create an
enormous change in performance of AI and its potential to drive enterprise value.
With these new generative AI practices, deep-learning models can be pre-trained on
vast amounts of raw, unlabeled data.

TOEFL BASED QUESTIONS

Reading

1. According to John McCarthy's definition in his 2004 paper, artificial intelligence (AI) is
primarily concerned with:
a) Creating intelligent machines and computer programs.
b) Understanding human intelligence through computer methods.
 c) Observing biological methods to develop intelligent systems.
d) Engineering systems for specific tasks.

2. Who is credited with proposing the Turing Test to distinguish between human and
computer intelligence?
a) John McCarthy
b) Alan Turing
c) Stuart Russell
d) Peter Norvig

3. Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig's book, "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach,"
outlines four potential goals or definitions of AI, including:
a) Systems that act intuitively.
b) Systems that think biologically.
c) Systems that think rationally.
d) Systems that learn autonomously.

4. Weak AI, also known as Narrow AI or Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), is

characterized by:
a) Machines with human-equivalent intelligence.
b) Machines focused on performing specific tasks.
c) Machines capable of self-aware consciousness.
d) Machines surpassing human intelligence.

5. Deep learning differs from classical, or "non-deep," machine learning primarily in:
a) Its reliance on human intervention for learning.
b) Its ability to process structured data.
c) Its use of neural networks with more than three layers.
d) Its requirement for labeled datasets.

6. Generative AI models, such as GPT-3 and BERT, are distinguished by their ability to:
a) Analyze numerical data.
b) Generate statistically probable outputs.
c) Classify images with high accuracy.
d) Process structured datasets.

7. What is one of the real-world applications mentioned for computer vision technology?
a) Automated stock trading
b) Natural language processing
c) Radiology imaging in healthcare
d) Cross-selling strategies in e-commerce
8. Which event in the history of artificial intelligence marked the advent of deep generative
modeling according to the text?
a) Alan Turing's proposal of the Turing Test
b) John McCarthy's coinage of the term "artificial intelligence"
c) Introduction of variational autoencoders (VAEs) in 2013
d) IBM's Deep Blue defeating Garry Kasparov in chess

9. The year 2016 saw a significant milestone in artificial intelligence when DeepMind's
AlphaGo program:
a) Defeated Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter at Jeopardy!
b) Identified and categorized images with high accuracy
c) Surpassed human intelligence in the game of Go
d) Introduced the concept of generative AI

10. According to the text, what marked a significant change in the performance of AI and its
potential to drive enterprise value in 2023?
a) The invention of variational autoencoders (VAEs)
b) The rise of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT
c) IBM's Deep Blue defeating Garry Kasparov in chess
d) Google's purchase of DeepMind for $400 million

Mixed-up Summary:

1. The text discusses various definitions and milestones in the field of artificial
intelligence (AI).

A. Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig outline four potential goals or definitions of AI.
B. Deep learning and machine learning are sub-fields of AI, with deep learning being a
subset of machine learning.
C. Weak AI, also known as Narrow AI, is focused on performing specific tasks.
D. Generative AI models, such as GPT-3 and BERT, have revolutionized the field by
generating statistically probable outputs.
E. The history of AI includes significant events like Alan Turing's proposal of the Turing
Test and DeepMind's AlphaGo defeating the world champion Go player.
F. The rise of large language models, like ChatGPT, has drastically improved AI
performance and its potential applications.

Listening

AI Is Dangerous, but Not for the Reasons You Think | Sasha Luccioni | TED
1.What kind of email did Sasha Luccioni receive that made her think about her job?

2. To Sasha, what is the first problem about A.I?

A)The money companies waste with it
B)The jobs people are losing because of the A.I
C)How A.I use tons of energy, plastic and metal and it directly affects climate change.
D)How A.I are not politically regulated.

3.Does A.I have something in common with basic social prejudice? Which ones? What
problems it can cause?

Speaking

1. Taking into account the text you read, make a brief summary about A.I’s history.

2. Taking into account the video you watched, give your opinion about these topics:
a)Which, in your opinion, is the worst thing about A.I nowadays?
b)How does A.I’s impact on climate global changes?
c)Is there a possibility of regulating in a political way the A.I’s? Is that important?

3.Give your opinion about the advantages and disadvantages of AI’s.