The broader perspective here would be to think about the three different categories altogether: AI, Machine Learning and Data Science.
Artificial Intelligence is all about applying logic and reason and the question to think about is are we there yet?
To start with, let’s look at the industries where AI has been applied and is successful. We have seen the use of AI in a few industries like retail, manufacturing, business processes, consumer goods, automobile industry, customer service domain. Basically, all commercial and customer facing domains have witnessed the various capabilities delivered by Artificial Intelligence.
But, applying it universally to everything is going to take time. One major problem with AI is that many people don’t think about how hard it is for engineers to “define a problem” and then set up the inputs correctly to solve that problem. And, that is why data science is an important part of the development of AI and Machine Learning to sort out the data and use it to their effectiveness.
What is Machine Learning?
Machine learning is a very interesting topic. In simple words, it is a machine taking millions of bits of data and producing the desired result. That’s how it works, the more data you feed, say for a specific task like the type of exercise for a specific injury, the machine will be more accurate with its suggestions as the data keeps increasing.
Most jobs that require any sort of pattern recognition or repetition can benefit from this. Medical field is going to change drastically especially diagnostics. Like the IBM’s Watson for Oncology that advises the doctor before choosing a treatment and learns from the data collected by the doctors. With the increasing power of computer, this technology will increasingly nest in almost all parts of our organizations.
Eventually, it will lead to extensive automation of processes in the organization and will help in making informed decisions which will free up time that is presently going in all kinds of manual tasks.
What is the extent of AI that we see now?
Applications with the capability of fully understanding human speech or security software that works on the basis of facial recognition or virtual assistants on your mobile devices with which you can have a meaningful conversation. These are a few examples of AI that we see around us or are using.
How will AI affect the world in the next five years?
The effect of AI, Machine Learning and Data Science is inevitable as we will start to see more and more applications with all three technologies in the business world. Most organizations will use it to a much greater extent especially in simplifying processes, analysing data and providing insight.
1 – Improved speech, voice, image and video recognition
Over the next few years, we will see some major improvements in the voice, speech and image quality. Real time processing combined with cheap and omnipresent sensors will make it more cost effective and efficient to process data. We will also see wide adoption of these in industries for factory operations, security systems, agriculture, traffic and many other verticals.
2 – Personal assistants will become more personal
The scope of assistants will expand in the coming years as they will start understanding the context of people’s requests and with time be more accurate. People will start accepting personal assistants as they will become more personalized to their needs. However, it is yet to be seen whether assistants will be displacing tradition GUI completely.
With the expansion of personal assistants, we can also expect to see robots in the household sector.
3 – AI will become much more widely adopted by enterprises and AI will have a positive impact on humanity which will be felt in all spheres of life
We can expect AI to take up more decision making tasks like automated fleet management, inventory management and resume screening are a few examples.
Each step forward in AI research will be a step towards a easier and better lifestyle. There are companies that are using AI for drug discovery and others are using AI for disease prediction and treatment.
Conclusion
Overall, people need to embrace the technological advancement brought by AI, Machine Learning and Data Science as it can definitely improve the society. Despite many concerns about privacy and security of data, we can use AI/ML to optimize our energy usage, lower our food costs, and make medicine more accessible and more accurate.
