What exactly is AI? — Chapter 1

Chapter 1 — What AI is, and what it isn’t.

Since 2012, our Company has had a busy team of software engineers who are expert in both research and development of Artificial Intelligence, “AI”, working to launch our AI workbench platform. Our researchers are led by a retired IBM Gold Consultant.

Since 2013 a requirement of our researchers is that they have a PhD in a field related to AI. Our developers are highly competent senior developers. We only pick the best.

We are often asked “what exactly is AI?”.

Most experts have settled on a description of AI as being the scientific endeavour of building computers that mimic the capabilities of the human brain. No one who fundamentally understands AI is seriously arguing that we can build a computer that can match the intelligence of the human brain in the foreseeable future, if ever. Indeed, we still don’t know how the human brain works.

We all know that computers can do some things we humans can’t. Computers have beaten world champions of popular games including Chess, Jeopardy and Go. They can identify a person using facial recognition in fractions of a second.

But the gaming successes are examples of clever techniques rather than intelligent computers. To achieve them, computers need a clever human-made mathematical formula called an algorithm and, often, lots of training managed by humans.