Naturally! Artificial Intelligence!

Artificial Intelligence (AI): doesn’t it make you feel like you are diving into a sci-fi movie whenever these words come across a conversation? I’ve noticed that many people have this perception, and while partially there is and will be a fictional aspect to AI at least for a few more decades, we have been interacting with all sorts of AI for a while now, in many cases without realizing it.

The term “Artificial Intelligence” dates back to the mid 50’s, and don’t worry, I won’t delve into boring names and historical facts. I mention this for the sole purpose of making you realize that if you are not older than 60 years old at the time this post was uploaded, then the thought of AI is older than you. Kinda shocking, right? AI is not a recent concept at all.

There are three common visions, or eras, of AI that people are talking about, which are Narrow AI, General AI and Super AI. Let’s talk a bit about them:

The first, Narrow AI, is the AI era where we currently stand, where an AI is primarily comprised of lines of code and data to have the AI serve a specific task. So far this just sounds like most pieces of software out there, right? Well the main difference is that an AI doesn’t just sit there waiting for a human to interact with it, but rather it can proactively respond and learn based on past interactions and this is one of the reasons why big data is such an important aspect of Narrow AI: large amounts of data are needed for an AI to be able to analyze past and current events and thus react proactively. Examples of this are everywhere these days, like the chatbots you can find in many websites where you type questions in a natural way and the software will recognize your syntax and question intent and provide you an answer almost immediately, or also with speech recognition devices already widely available in the market like Amazon’s Alexa, or even Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana are examples of Narrow AI, serving particular purposes as mentioned, in this case, recognizing your voice or text and being able to translate your requests into actions based on huge amounts of data that humans have previously "fed" to the AIs.

Chatbots are revolutionizing many industries, particularly the Financials vertical.

Narrow AI is everywhere and is now, and this is really where Natural (human) Intelligence produces Artificial Intelligence to help us with some of our everyday tasks and to speed up processes that otherwise would take us much more time to complete on our own.

But what will happen when we manage to create a computer or program than can, unrestricted, think as a human being? This is the concept of General AI. The human mind is capable of much more than simply understanding written or spoken commands and replying to them, or analyzing data and getting insights: we can be creative, and produce, entirely from scratch, new things, not to mention sympathize and empathize by the understanding of something so abstract and cultural as what we call “feelings”. We are a few decades away from this kind of AI, one than can help us create new things, than can truly understand our emotions and even develop its own, and why not, perhaps that can even reproduce (not biologically of course) and evolve. Chances are that if you have small children, they’ll be able to experience this era of General AI, or if you are below your 30’s at the time this article was written, who knows? You might be able to get a glimpse of the first examples of General AI.

Sophia from Hanson Robotics is one of the most human-like AIs to date, and yet it's still far from being considered a General AI. 

Further ahead in the future lies the concept of Super AI. An artificial intelligence that surpasses the capabilities of the human mind. A level of intelligence so strong and superior that could help us solve all the mysteries of the universe and become the kicker that will launch us towards a civilization of people who don’t need to worry about working, about illnesses or financials since these Super AIs will help humanity run in the most efficient manner to create a real Utopia. If you already watched Captain Marvel, then you might be already relating this concept to the Supreme Intelligence portrayed in this movie, and you are totally right! Just hopefully we won't get all those weird circuit things creeping all over your body!

The Supreme Intelligence from Marvel's Captain Marvel is a great example of what a Super AI could be like.

AI is a broad and evolving topic, it exists now and it will be here in the near and far future, so it’s important to understand where we stand in this moment to be able to keep its pace. I hope that through this article I was able to help some people out there to get a better grasp of this not-anymore-sci-fi topic.

I’ll leave you guys with one last thought: To create something artificial you need components coming from a natural origin, and human intelligence, at its most glorious natural biology, is creating today what 60 years ago was no more than a wild dream. No matter what AI becomes, in the end, it was our natural dedication, persistence, curiosity and wonder what broke through the wall of fiction to bring us into this amazing reality that we are living in today.

Thanks for reading!

Jose David Mendoza Fallas