What do you mean by Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science that replicates the problem-solving and decision-making abilities of the human mind. AI has made significant progress in various domains, including disability inclusion, early cancer detection, weather forecasting, security and surveillance, and more.
The influence of AI in marketing and its presence in everyday life are widespread. Think of personalized movie recommendations on your favorite streaming platform or product suggestions for your next online order.
Below are five key subfields that play a crucial role in the functioning of AI:
- Machine learning: Machine learning (ML) is an AI branch that utilizes algorithms to learn from data, enabling classification or prediction of patterns. ML insights contribute to informed decision-making in areas such as marketing and business operations. ML can be either supervised or unsupervised. Supervised learning involves training data with known outcomes and is commonly used in market research, predictive modeling, and text parsing.
- Neural networks: Neural networks, also known as artificial neural networks (ANNs), are learning algorithms that rely on training data. They are a subset of ML and designed to mimic the way the human brain processes information and establishes connections between different data points. Neural networks can continue learning as they process more data, gradually improving their accuracy. Conversely, their learning can be halted, allowing them to perform based on their existing knowledge.
- Deep learning: Deep learning is a subfield of ANNs and refers to neural networks with three or more layers of neurons. Deep learning algorithms are more powerful than shallow neural networks due to their enhanced ability to optimize and refine results for accuracy. It enables various AI applications, including smart assistants (such as Siri and Alexa), healthcare, fraud detection, and facial recognition technologies.
- Natural language processing: Natural language processing (NLP) is an AI field focused on enabling computers to understand and process human language. NLP models can perform tasks like language translation, text summarization, classification, and even language generation. This empowers businesses to utilize AI for processing customer experience data, sentiment analysis, and more. NLP is also the underlying technology behind conversational AI systems like ChatGPT.
- Computer vision: Computer vision is an AI subfield that revolves around efficiently processing images for diverse applications. One class of algorithms used in this field is convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which excel at handling image, speech, or audio inputs. Recent advancements in deep learning and CNNs have revolutionized computer vision, allowing computers to process vast amounts of image data and even generate new images. CNNs find applications in early cancer detection, surveillance, space exploration, and visual effects development for films.
While AI continues to advance, further research is needed to unlock its full potential. As it becomes increasingly integrated into our lives, responsible AI practices that prioritize privacy, security, transparency, intellectual property fairness, reliability, and inclusion are of utmost importance.