Machine Learning – Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence – Is the situation seen in “The Matrix/Her/Minority Report” becoming a reality?

I have seen a few of the path breaking films from the Hollywood, namely “The Matrix”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Terminator 2: Judgement Day”, “Minority Report” and “Her”. Obviously there are other films that are very as intriguing and ahead-of-time movies they were, they were engrossing and the use of technology made it very exciting for the viewers. A commonality of all these films had is Artificial Intelligence.

While Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Neural Networks and Genetic Programming have been around for some time now (Machine Learning was coined way back in 1959 by Arthur Samuel, Contemporary AI term used in 1956 by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky with examples of thinking machines existing in Greek Mythology etc.) , real fruition of these advanced computer science techniques are seen these days in the field of data mining, intelligent/context sensitive Digital applications, Searches, Medical diagnostics and Robotics.

It is more evident by the fact that some of the cutting edge firms are showing strides – leaps and bounds – in the Machine Language and Artificial intelligence areas and is making what was impossible to make them say “I’m possible”. Yes, the advances in big-data are largely aided by the advances in machine language. Be it learning (statistical, computational, predictive, assisted, supervised learning etc.) or clustering of data or decision trees and searches or anomaly detection or use of neural networks for decision making.

What is the proof of this getting the necessary momentum and attention? A Silicon Valley start-up called Vicarious has successfully run an AI driven computer programme that has passed Turing Test and busted CAPTCHA with great success ratio. This firm is supported by venture capital funding by who’s who of Tech world and has some of the greatest minds in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence working for them. If Vicarious is successful in their objectives of having an architecture driven by algorithms to help machines achieve human level intelligence in vision, speech and movement, the examples we see in the blockbuster Hollywood movies will become a reality.

Other cases in point – Google, Microsoft, Facebook, LinkedIn and a lot of other technology leaders are offering machine learning as an offering/product or using it as their key technological driver for success of their products. Google – on one-hand has acquired a lot of break-through leaders in machine learning and artificial intelligence such as DeepMind, Dark Blue Labs, Vision Factory, DNN Research, JetPac etc. I feel that these acquisitions will improve the arsenal of tools that Google has in-house to improve the technological hegemony for search, AI driven products and services. Other innovators are not far behind.

While I think that a “The Matrix or Minority Report or Her” like situation is a few decades to a century away, it is very good to see the strides made in the past decade. The advances made by these firms are ground breaking. Be it HTM (Hierarchical Temporal Memory) based learning mechanism pioneered by Dileep George/Jeff Hawkins/Donna Dubinsky or use of cognitive models based on how brain/neurons work to solve real-world problems using computers/machines – Machine Learning/Artificial intelligence is in the main stream. People like Oracle, The Key Maker, Agents seen in Matrix could be a reality.

Thinking about synergies between analytics , AI-ML – One visible example on how this is used is in Google Search, AdSense, AdWords and majority of the revenue making mechanism Google follows. Similarly, context sensitive machine language driven Ads by other technology leaders is another example (Facebook, LinkedIn). Retailers and eCommerce sites can benefit from Human Brain Like thinking induced by AI by learning adaptively. We do have a bunch of software that are self-healing. When it comes to M2M or IOT, Self-Healing actions driven by Analytics, AI and ML can go a long way. With Driverless vehicles (such as Google Car or OSCar or Pilotless vehicles) could become a reality soon.

With the expansion in Big Data and Machine to Machine / Internet of things picking up, while fictional fantasy may be few decades away, use of ML and AI is not very far away when it comes to IOT, Big Data and Connected Home and Intelligent Application behaviour.

One of the key use of Machine Learning is on the Problem Solving, analytics by clustering the data, use structured prediction, use clustering and association, use trees/forests, linear regressions, Bayesian networks, analytics driven by machine learning. So, links are simple and bi-directional, when AI comes into picture, it is having an AI engine that allows human like tasks on top of ML-Analytics driven purely by mathematics to take it to a whole new level. This is similar to having intelligent robots and machines having precision/accuracy not impacted by fatigue by humans but with similar/better intellect by using AI.This is where the movies “The Matrix” , “Her”, “Minority Report” comes in as excellent references.

What do you think about Machine Learning and Advances in Artificial Intelligence?

Note: All comments and opinions expressed (other than facts referred) are personal opinions of the author. Image Credits : Free images sourced from stockphotosforfree.com.