Discussion of artificial intelligence (AI) elicits a wide range of feelings. On one end of the spectrum is fear of job loss spurred by a bot revolution. On the opposite is excitement about the overblown prospects of what people can achieve with machine augmentation.
Rather than thinking about what could be, The author says businesses looking to adopt AI should look at what already exists.
This book is designed to teach you the absolute basics of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it is used today. It has been written assuming that the reader has zero experience in the field of AI, computer science, or math. As such, many of the concepts are easy to follow and understand.
When we say artificial intelligence, we generally mean one of two things. The first is narrow or specific AI that allows a computer to solve complex problems well but not much of anything else. The other is the type of intelligence that would allow a computer to think as we do. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is what researchers consider the "holy grail" of AI research. A machine that has artificial general intelligence can think on levels comparable to a human.
The field of general AI remains an academic pursuit with little to no business applications whatsoever. So far, nobody has figured out how to bring about general intelligence in computers. Researchers who work in this space are less concerned with teaching computers how to drive cars and more interested in studying the nature of intelligence. Many of them study the development of intelligence in human beings from the gestation period to childhood and beyond.
