Artificial intelligence has been one of the most intriguing parts of science fiction for decades.
We have been fixated on the idea of creating life from nothing – a life that responds to us in the same way that we do to it and with the capabilities to almost pass as human.
However, the reality is somewhat different than what we can see in sci-fi novels and on the silver screen. Let’s take a look at some of the emerging real-life applications of Artificial Intelligence that we are seeing in the real world today.
Smart Assistants
One of the most obvious areas of our daily lives where we can interact with an AI is on our smartphones. Nearly every brand of smartphone will come with some sort of smart assistant to help us out. Siri is well-known as Apple’s AI, with Bixby, Cortana, and the Google Assistant all forming other options that people might have tried. In the realm of home assistants, you can again find Google as well as Amazon’s Alexa leading the way when it comes to having AI in the home.
These tools are becoming increasingly easy for us to bring into our homes, and they are becoming ever more sophisticated.
One of the biggest innovations we have seen recently has been the developments that have allowed the Google Assistant to call businesses and make appointments. It is very difficult to tell the difference between a real human voice and the AI, making it a true testament to the development of the tech.
Cars
Self-driving cars are now present on our roads in bigger numbers than they have ever been before. The development of Teslas and their boom in popularity means that it is entirely feasible that someone is able to get a car that is capable of driving itself. Does this come with limitations? Of course, the autopilot cannot take you from A to B quite yet. You will still need to be in control of the vehicle for part of the journey.
One of the big introductions that we have seen rolled out across multiple makes of car is parking assistance. Instead of having to fumble about and reverse a car into a narrow parking space, the assistant can be switched on and the car will guide itself back into space. This is done with a complex mix of sensors and AI and has no doubt helped to ease the anxieties of many drivers all over the world.
However, will we ever see a dominance of self-driving cars? The answer is – not likely, or at least not likely any time soon. There still exists a big mistrust between the drivers of manual cars and the capabilities of self-driving cars and it will take a lot of further development to see them sharing the road together. What we can expect is small areas with self-driving vehicles as standard, with a great integration over time.
Chat Bots
Head to any website nowadays and there will usually be a chat box to one side of the screen. You can use this to interact with the company in a much more direct and quick manner compared to sending an email. For example, if you have a quick question about the games on offer at the Roof Top Room, all you would have to do is pop the query in the chat box and you would have an answer back faster than you could blink.
While some companies still connect you directly to a customer service representative, many have introduced a form of AI that is able to communicate with the customer instead.
They have a set list of questions that they can pose back to the customer to try to determine what needs they have, and they will then try to reach a solution that suits them.
One key part of these AI’s functions is to gather more information about the query. This can then be collated and passed on to a customer service representative if the claim needs to go further.
If not, the AI might be able to offer a workable solution that suits the customer just fine! This means that the customer service representative can move on and focus on the more complex cases, with the AI confidently and competently taking care of the more trivial ones.
Surgeries
Finally, it is thought that AI could prove to be a tremendous help in high pressure situations such as surgeries. No matter how skilled they are, there are some things that surgeons simply can’t do.
Having an Artificial Intelligence to assist with the surgery could help to negate some of the factors surrounding the most risky surgeries we can currently perform, and it could allow us to push our understanding of medicine to the next level.
What is unlikely to happen is the elimination of the human surgeon in the operating theatre. Medical experts are all in agreement that AIs and robotics developed for the field of healthcare are to be tools and not replacements. They will be waiting to be used in the operating theatre, and they might be able to turn the tide on many complex surgeries, but they will never be able to replace the expertise of a surgeon.
A Bright Future
Artificial intelligence could prove to be one of humanity’s greatest achievements. Though it was long thought to just be a dream of science fiction, the hard work of many individuals in the field has proven that it can indeed be a reality. One of the most exciting things about this area by far is its potential.
We are already integrating AI into our everyday lives – in our homes, our vehicles, and our places of work – and yet we have barely scratched the surface of potential development here. This is likely to be a field that will bear some monumental discoveries in the next few decades. Anyone who is keenly interested in where this technology could take us will find plenty to research and discover.
