You can’t go anywhere without hearing someone talk about AI: are our jobs safe? Have you seen this new AI tool? Will robots take over the world?! And while you may be eager to join in on the conversation, you find yourself a bit lost on what artificial intelligence actually is and why people are seemingly going so crazy over it. Don’t worry: this is completely normal.
As a relatively new technology that has quickly risen to incredible importance in not only the tech world, but across multiple industries, artificial intelligence is definitely something you should understand.
However, we understand that it can be a tough concept to grasp, especially if your exposure to it has been limited in the past. That’s exactly why we wrote this article: to explain the basics of artificial intelligence to you, give you real world examples of how AI is applied to our lives, and provide suggestions on how you can take the first steps towards incorporating AI into your personal or professional lives.
Ready? Let’s dive in.
The Basics of Artificial Intelligence
Okay, so let’s break it down: artificial intelligence, at a very surface level, is the creation of human-like decision making processes and intelligence in machines, allowing them to independently mimic how a human’s reasoning process would go to make similar decisions. Before AI was further developed, computers could only handle the inputs they were given and the instructions they were told to follow; now with AI, computers can work on their own to perform tasks that were previously reserved for humans.
As you can imagine, the field of AI is quite broad and within it, there are four main subsets:
Machine learning: this branch of AI focuses specifically on developing the algorithms and models that allow computers to make human-like decisions on their own, without specific instructions. Trained on large amounts of data, machine learning models are very skilled at recognizing patterns and trends.
Neural networks: the human brain is incredibly complex and neural networks seek to replicate this structure by teaching it how to recognize complex patterns and features in data.
Natural language processing: focused on understanding, interpreting, and generating human language, natural language processing is the technology that powers chatbots, voice assistants, or translation tools.
Robotics: this branch of AI centers its efforts on building efficient and intelligent machines that can handle physical tasks, such as assembly line work, while processing outside information and what’s going on around the machine.
The trajectory of AI
We’ve made incredible progress in recent years, but there’s still a lot of work to be done and ground to cover in the field of AI. To better understand where experts want to take AI, let’s group AI development into three categories: narrow AI (now), general AI (the near future), and superintelligence (the distant future).
Narrow AI
Even with all the progress we’ve made in recent years, there’s still a lot to be accomplished. Because the focus of AI until today has been on specific applications, such as text analysis and trend identification, narrow AI is quite skilled on the tasks on which it has been trained, transforming industries such as healthcare, finance, and customer service.
General AI
In the future, AI researchers would like to arrive at a point where AI tools are more autonomous and can use their surroundings and intelligence to increase their knowledge, learn, and apply their findings to various tasks. As General AI continues to advance, it will gain the power to be applied to general settings instead of specific tasks.
Superintelligence
Arriving at the superintelligence phase of AI would be incredibly impactful, because it would mean that AI tools have mastered the human thought and decision-making process and are able to work completely autonomously as humans do. And because AI tools are so powerful and can work nonstop at incredible speeds, this would have a truly tremendous impact on productivity and efficiency.
Real Life Examples of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is quickly advancing and you’ve probably already been interacting with some forms of artificial intelligence. Let’s check out a few of the most common real life applications of AI so that you better understand how AI connects with the real world:
Digital assistants: the technology that allows tools like Siri or Alexa to not only understand you, but respond to you, is artificial intelligence! In addition, companies that use chatbots to answer customer queries or concerns in a fast and efficient manner are also using AI technology.
Finance: from flagging potentially fraudulent activity or using your bank’s mobile app to check your accounts or transfer money, you’re using artificial intelligence technology to improve your banking.
Recommendations: ever finished listening to a song, reading a book on your reader, or watching a TV show and see the perfect suggestion pop up? It’s not by chance–it’s AI systems evaluating the data of the content you’ve consumed before and what other users have done to find the best recommendations for you.
There are tons of examples of AI and it would take us forever to go through all of them, but we hope these three have opened your eyes to how AI is working behind the scenes in a variety of areas.
Getting into AI
If your interest has been piqued by this article and you want to learn how to bring AI to your day-to-day life, you’re in luck: AI skills are growing in demand in a wide range of industries and no matter what your current role is, there are definitely AI skills that you can learn to help propel your career further. Or if you’re interested in AI itself, you can change careers and work on the forefront of AI innovation.
If you want to add AI skills to your toolbox, consider checking out AI School by Ironhack, the first school of its kind dedicated solely to teaching working professionals the skills they need to know to advance their careers. AI School classes are held after work hours and over the course of a few weeks, allowing you to take what you’ve learned and apply it to your job immediately. We’re launching new courses, but for now check out:
If a career change is more up your alley and you’d like to dive into working in the field of AI, consider our Artificial Intelligence Engineering Bootcamp, which is designed for those with little to no experience in AI to master the basics and prepare for roles such as AI engineer, AI software engineer, AI solution specialist, and AI prompt engineer. You can choose from part or full time options and enjoy dedicated career support for up to a year post-graduation to help you master the job hunt and land your first tech role.
Is AI for you? We think so and it’s up to you to choose the right path to defend your employability and remain a competitive candidate in today’s fast changing job market.
