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Looking Beyond the Hype
The past few years have seen significant advancements
in computing power. With this, machines seem to have
a greater ability to learn about us and participate in
our lives. Whether through product purchase suggestions
on Amazon.com and other retail outlets or in our
business and professional pursuits, machines are busy learning everywhere
around us. Recently, the market has become flooded with buzz
words relating to this type of work.
Learning the Proper Terms
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning are
often used inaccurately and interchangeably. Given the significant
advancements that have been made in this field, especially in the
physical security industry, it is important that we be clear about these
terms and their application. Using the term AI loosely only serves to
misrepresent what machine learning can do and has the potential to
generate misguided and unrealistic expectations.
Artificial Intelligence. AI is a broad term that first appeared in
published research in 1956. For years, we understood AI as it appeared
in pop culture, which lead to questions of a robot’s emotional
capacity or their ability to take over the world. AI denotes a fully
functional artificial brain that can reason, evolve, self-learn, and make
human-like decisions. Currently, we are many years (or decades) away
from this. Using the term artificial intelligence (or AI) related to technology
or applications today can be inaccurate and potentially raise
unrealistic expectations for those considering the technology.
Today’s examples of what many consider to be AI in our lives—
Deep Blue beating a top chess player, Siri recognizing a song, Amazon
suggesting a new book—are really examples of increasingly
small computers running a series of algorithms, searching through
huge databases, or doing a lot of calculations very quickly. With their
faster computing power and processing speeds, our current machines
are able to comb through a huge amount of data to provide deeper
insights. These results can be more accurately categorized as guesses
that can help us make decisions more quickly and efficiently.
This article originally appeared in the March 2019 issue of Security Today.
Credit: Google News
