What is AI?

I was watching a LinkedIn Live event featuring my friend Emad Georgy . It was a fantastic session on AI and how to deploy it within your business. Early in the talk, Emad mentioned that the term AI does not have much meaning anymore because it is so nebulous. So I thought that a post about what AI actually is might be helpful.

First off, the term Artificial Intelligence was coined in 1956 at the Dartmouth Conference. At this point, it meant that machines could perform tasks requiring human-like problem-solving abilities. This would be the goal of AI for the next few decades. Throughout the 60's and 70's AI was focused on the development of expert systems that used rules logic to mimic the decision making process of human's. But, as we all know, that can be highly difficult because at this point, machines did not have the processing power to mimic that process.

In the 80's and 90's, the effort shifted to the use of computing power to use data driven/modeling approaches to make predictions based on data. This effort accelerated in the 2000's as computing power became more easily attainable to run complex modeling approaches such as Neural Networks. This is when the discipline really took off.

At first, we were using a very quantitative approach to AI. Having it make predictions on behaviors using large data sets and complex modeling behavior. Until 2022, and the release of ChatGPT, we were really only able to process this on highly structured data sets and produce fairly specific outcomes.

Thus launched the effort of natural language modeling. And the boon here is that now we can have machines process unstructured data and qualitative analysis. This increases the productivity of the average human immensely. Up until this point, it would take us weeks to analyze information in our systems to produce a decision or a "bet" really. Now we can test concepts and ideas using natural language in interfacing with the computer. It really is an amazing technology that alters our future.

So, in effect, what AI really is a computer model. The latest investment boom is fueled by our ability to train the model on unstructured data (which requires an immense amount of processing power that just more recently became available) and interact with that model by using natural human-based language. Allowing a Non-coder/analyst/BI developer/etc to ask a question to the machine and get an answer.

From here, there are all sorts of capabilities that will become open to us as we continue to develop and explore ideas. This is where the tech community is at its best, coming up with novel ideas that will make our lives easier and more productive.

Yes, it will change the world for everyone. Yes, we are in a period of creative destruction. We are entering into an age of transformation that we have not encountered in our human endeavor on this planet. It's another industrial revolution, but it will happen faster and move us farther forward than we ever have before.

I find it exciting, how about you?