Welcome to AI Unfiltered

Illustration generated using DALL·E 2.

What is it?

What is AI, how does it impact on ordinary people’s daily lives, where is it used, how is it used, who is using it, and should it even be used in the first place? These, along with many more questions, are the ones we will be discussing in our weekly episodes. Artificial intelligence, or AI for short, is a term that’s applied to a lot of different things. In fact, it is used so widely that is becoming meaningless. In order to try and bring back part of that meaning, let’s take a look at some concrete examples of where and how AI affects our daily lives.

Where is it used?

One example that most of us can probably relate to is social media, as so many of us use it on a daily basis. Imagine, for example, you take a photo on your smartphone and upload it to your preferred social media platform. The platform will then automatically identify and tag your friends and family in the picture using AI technology. Or perhaps you’ve already used, or even regularly do use, Google’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana or Amazon’s Alexa, all excellent examples of a digital assistant. Each system uses its own software to recognise your voice and translate it into text to understand what you want in order to give you a response. They are all examples of AI being applied to help make life easier and more convenient.

It’s not science fiction

Imagine you are arranging a dinner party. Before the party Amazon’s Alexa will close the curtains, dim the lights, choose suitable mood music, while running you a bath at the correct water temperature so you are nice and clean for your guests. When the guests arrive a facial recognition system checks they are invited and opens the door accordingly. Perhaps your robot butler even takes their coats and escorts them to the dining room to be waited on by an AI enabled mixologist who mixes them their favourite cocktail while robochef takes care of the dinner. None of the above is science fiction, even if it sounds like it might be. Nothing described in this article is a figment of the writer’s imagination, it all exists and is everyday use. OK, the butler, mixologist, and chef are probably out of the price range of most of us, but Alexa is already happily embedded in many homes carrying out exactly the tasks described.

Welcome to the world of AI unfiltered.

Written by Ian Bowie