Hopefully, more and more of the items described in this section will be easily recognised in todays smart home environment and they won't be thought of as something for the 'future'.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a term that refers to the ability to learn from the environment and adapt or respond appropriately. There are many areas to consider and they include the following:
Learning
The ability to evaluate from tasks performed and make corrections and plan for the future.
Reasoning
The ability to look at events and challenges and work out solutions. This can involve computing many different scenarios and make judgements based on many different factors.
Natural language processing
Audio technology to enable the device to interact with conversation. This is two-way understandable language. We are very familiar with these type of things already, like Siri, Alexa, and Google Home.
Use of artificial intelligence in our everyday lives
One of the main learning purposes of AI is the ability to perform useful tasks and solve problems along the way without the need for external input.
AI is already successfully operating in the following areas of our lives:
- Photography - some digital cameras use AI to recognise individuals, environment conditions and then remember this for future photographs.
- Self-driving cars and drones - by linking the AI photography and other sensing devices your car (and other vehicles) can navigate for themselves. This also includes avoiding obstacles that appear different from previous identical journeys.
- Games - a digital chess board is one example of an AI assisted game that can access memory of recorded and previous games while recognising specific playing patterns of the opponent.
- Health - the diagnosis and treatment processes are being merged with AI technology to both speed up and make more effective medical actions. There are massive opportunities in this sector.
- Targeted advertising - search engines and online advertising platforms pool a very wide information resource about each of us to make AI decisions as they deliver advertising content to the digital media we view. Irrespective of how we feel about this, it is happening and the algorithms or really not just logic paths but developing into true AI. They don't make guesses!
Social concerns
There are already concerns over moral and ethical topics surrounding the growing AI of everyday devices. When they are provided and controlled by commercial organisations their ultimate intent is being drawn into question.
There are many amazing applications for AI that can make our lives safer, healthier and happier. But, conversely there are topics that are still open to debate. In the future we may see more social policy enacted to protect us from particular levels of AI.
Watch this space, and yes I am a human writing this and not an AI!
