It’s been almost a decade since we started recognizing the word artificial intelligence (AI) in our day-to-day life. AI has been around since many decades already but as it was more in the form known to us as computers and super computers only.

In the last decade it started to emerge more strongly as we started using artificial intelligence more widely in the form of search which after some years became voice enabled and even image enabled.

Artificial intelligence in simple terms is intelligence exhibited by machines and computers to do human like thinking, calculations, understanding and even day to day activities we carry out.

As the name suggests, artificial means not real human but it can more or less do everything that a human can do. Although we are still far from having 100% human like AI machines and robots but we are fast progressing in the direction of having it.

Artificial intelligence is of three types or we can call them having three different phases. The first one is Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) followed by Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and lastly Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI).

The ANIs (Artificial Narrow Intelligence) are initial use systems that perform normal tasks in one or two areas purely based on programmed rules. They can’t self-learn and can only execute specific tasks as per programmed. All their decisions and actions are pre-determined based on various options assigned to them. E.g., Google Translate, Email spam filter software, Chess app., Speech recognition etc.

The AGIs (Artificial General Intelligence) are more advanced than ANIs (Artificial Narrow Intelligence) and work seamlessly across multiple functional areas for problem solving, decision support and reasoning. E.g., Siri, Automatic Stock trading software that decide on multiple factors, statistics and news on when to buy and when to sell stocks for higher gains.

The ASIs (Artificial Super Intelligence) are not yet fully ready. As the name suggest super intelligence means human like abilities to multitask, decide, act, learn and relate things like humans do. There are trials ongoing and robots as well super computers are being made that can achieve this but we are still not full there and it might take still 1 to 2 decades to reach this level of AI solutions.

Artificial intelligence (AIs) solutions are very helpful in improving efficiency and effectiveness for almost all functions. Here are some examples,

1.     For industrial site solutions of robotics help improve production significantly. 

2.     For innovation and development, the solutions on product development, test automations and statistics decision-making help prepare viable solutions for meeting customer needs.

3.     For Commercial organizations, the solutions on robotics process automation, machine learning based statistical analysis for accurate decision making and real time dashboard with built automated decision guidance.

4.     For Consumers and Customers, the solutions on recommending right products based on their choices and know how in various areas and stages of life.

5.     For Customer Support, the solutions on full detailed understanding of their customer base and how to keep them as well as engage them to increase sales.

Similarly, there are also solutions based on industry specific needs. E.g., Your MD, Google DeepMind, Netflix, Snapchat, Apple Siri, Google Tools, Autonomous vehicles etc.

Artificial intelligence is used almost all of us in various shapes and forms. Simply put all our day-to-day apps we used in mobile phone and computers have AI built in to support us by enhancing our productivity and decision making.

AI has many positive sides but it also has worrying negative sides to it. The negatives are related to ethics and deception. How do we know that the AI is ethically deciding and making decisions as its all programmed, it can be designed to deceive. AIs can also be prone to hacking and manipulations of decisions and actions. There are still many open ends to AIs safe & secure usage and reliability. 

The other major worry for people is, if we automate everything with AIs and Robotics, then what will happen to current job market. There will be a significant shift of jobs needed as almost all of current manual jobs can be taken up by AIs with in this decade.

Possibilities are immense and when computers came there was a huge transition of jobs, a similar transition will take place in this decade with AIs becoming fully operational and even more when they evolve to Super Intelligence level in the coming decade.