Understanding Artificial Intelligence summary

That’s a very good question, but to answer it, we first need to understand what intelligence is. And that isn’t as easy as you might think.

Is it the opposite of ignorance? Consider this: if you were asked when the city of Istanbul was founded, would you know? Most likely not. But does that make you unintelligent? And would you define Wikipedia as being intelligent because it can tell you the answer? (It’s the seventh century BCE, by the way).

So now that you know that AI isn’t intelligent in the same way as a human is, let’s take a look at what AI algorithms are.

You might be surprised to learn that they’re nothing special. They’re just like the cooking recipe we mentioned earlier – a step-by-step approach to solving a task. But it’s taken some time and years of research to develop them. And there’s no standardized approach, either, which means there are many different AI algorithms. But they do have some common elements: to overcome the limitations in memory and processing capacity of computers.

There are many AI methods that can be used to solve problems. As we’ve already established, they’re not intelligent and they don’t always provide the best solution to the problem being addressed. Sabouret provides many examples of these methods but here, let’s examine a first principles AI method called exploration.

Imagine you’re in Alexanderplatz on a trip to Berlin and you want to visit Museum Island. You can follow the route on the map and make a note of street names and where you need to turn. You build the route using your intelligence. Most of us can do that, but some might find themselves hopelessly lost. Thankfully, these days, we have GPS to help us. But how exactly does that work?

You might be wondering if we’ll ever build a machine that’s truly intelligent, one that learns as a child does, is aware of the world around it, can feel emotions, and with which we can build a future.

It’s a difficult question to answer, but although some researchers believe so, Sabouret says that there’s no current evidence to suggest that it’ll be possible.