AI: Aiming for Intelligence

Abstract

The term Artificial Intelligence or AI has seen wider and wider use, certainly in the past five years or so. Proponents say AI is the future of information technology (IT) and companies should get on the AI bandwagon. Tractica, a market research firm, forecasted huge market growth globally for AI software, expecting revenue to increase from about 10 billion U.S. dollars in 2018 to 126 billion by 2025. That is certainly significant. But what is AI? What kind of intelligence is artificial? In what ways will AI help? What capabilities can it bring? Could AI become smarter than humans? Or, can it potentially take over the world and replace human beings all together? We’ll try to answer such questions in ways simple to understand. This article is part of my ongoing Computational Thinking blog (computize.org/ctblog).