Term of the Moment
angstrom era
Definition: AI
(1) See Adobe Illustrator.
(2) (Artificial Intelligence) Devices and applications that exhibit human intelligence and behavior, including robots, self-driving cars, medical diagnosis, software programming and the generation of text, images and videos. Virtually every industry from finance to agriculture is exploring or using AI to improve operations and decision making. See AI in a nutshell, chatbot and AI glossary.
The Entire Field or One Application
The term AI may refer to the entire field of artificial intelligence or to one specific application of AI. Often, the term AI means a complete system; for example, "there is an AI to handle this." See AI agent and AI use cases.
Past and Present Buzzword
Although AI is a very hot topic today, the acid test of AI was actually defined in the 1940s by English scientist, Alan Turing, who said, "a machine has artificial intelligence when there is no discernible difference between the conversation generated by the machine and that of an intelligent person" (see Turing test). An ongoing competition for the best conversation chatbot started in 1991 (see Loebner Prize).
Will AI Eliminate Jobs?
Increasingly, people are concerned that AI will eliminate too many jobs. Estimates of the number of jobs lost in the future range from 300 million to one billion worldwide. See AI anxiety.
An Ironic Twist in Terminology
In the computer field, the term "intelligence" means processing capability. That means your microwave oven is intelligent, but the chatbot that creates an original video from your description is only "artificially" intelligent. See AI in a nutshell and AI glossary.
Shakey the Robot
Forty-Four Years Later
The Cerebras AI Computer
(2) (Artificial Intelligence) Devices and applications that exhibit human intelligence and behavior, including robots, self-driving cars, medical diagnosis, software programming and the generation of text, images and videos. Virtually every industry from finance to agriculture is exploring or using AI to improve operations and decision making. See AI in a nutshell, chatbot and AI glossary.
The Entire Field or One Application
The term AI may refer to the entire field of artificial intelligence or to one specific application of AI. Often, the term AI means a complete system; for example, "there is an AI to handle this." See AI agent and AI use cases.
Past and Present Buzzword
Although AI is a very hot topic today, the acid test of AI was actually defined in the 1940s by English scientist, Alan Turing, who said, "a machine has artificial intelligence when there is no discernible difference between the conversation generated by the machine and that of an intelligent person" (see Turing test). An ongoing competition for the best conversation chatbot started in 1991 (see Loebner Prize).
Will AI Eliminate Jobs?
Increasingly, people are concerned that AI will eliminate too many jobs. Estimates of the number of jobs lost in the future range from 300 million to one billion worldwide. See AI anxiety.
An Ironic Twist in Terminology
In the computer field, the term "intelligence" means processing capability. That means your microwave oven is intelligent, but the chatbot that creates an original video from your description is only "artificially" intelligent. See AI in a nutshell and AI glossary.
Developed in 1969 by the Stanford Research Institute, Shakey was the first fully mobile robot with artificial intelligence. Seven feet tall, Shakey was named after its rather unstable movements. (Image courtesy of The Computer History Museum.)
Funded by DARPA and made by Boston Dynamics, the 400-pound, 6'2" Atlas was designed for emergency rescue. Built in 2013, Atlas stumbled a bit in its first tests; however, teams of AI engineers taught Atlas to become very sophisticated. See robot and social robot. (Image courtesy of Boston Dynamics.)
Founder and chief architect of Cerebras Systems, Sean Lie is holding the wafer that is the heart of the Cerebras computer. Designed for AI processing, it contains 2.6 trillion transistors (see Cerebras AI computer). (Image courtesy of Cerebras Systems.)