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Clearing the AI clutter
Clearing the AI clutter

July 4, 2021

AI

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AI has been one of the most misinterpreted terms of the century. When I say AI most people think of humanoid robots, machine learning, deep learning etc. When I ask people about how they treat AI as a discipline, most of them say that AI is all programming and thus is a field of computer science. The thoughts you are going to encounter in the upcoming text is going to completely change your perspective.

AI is a multidisciplinary subject that deals with using mathematical models to solve real world mathematical problems that involves collection and analysis of lots of data. We all are surrounded by thousands of processes ranging from natural to artificial processes every moment of our life. These processes in some way affect our lives. When you sit down to study and switch on a light, somewhere in a remote area the fuel is generating electricity which is further transmitted to you using complex electrical systems in place. The essential items that you need are always available at your local stores, despite the long journey from manufacturer to your local store. When you invest in a mutual fund the fund manager has to go through loads of stock market data to make the correct choice for your investments. When you are planning a vacation you always make yourself acquainted with the weather of the destination, which again takes effort to analyze historical weather data. These examples clearly show that your daily lives directly or indirectly are affected by these processes. Can you see something common in these processes? All these processes are capable of creating a huge amount of data which can be harnessed to improve the reliability of these processes thus improving the lives of thousands of species including humans on earth. To convert this data into gold you need proper data collection systems, mathematical tools and implementation mechanisms. Now AI is just a new mathematical tool that has come to the market recently whose popularity has increased due to improving scalable and reliable data collection and analysis systems. Thus AI is a mathematical tool which is used to solve domain specific problems and is not something that is restricted to computer science. In the upcoming text let’s embark on the journey of amazing never imagined application of AI.

Let’s start with something without which you would not have the power for reading this article, electricity. Generation is not an easy process, it is about dynamically finding a right balance between load demand and supply. The legacy electric transmission infrastructure was not designed to accommodate the variety of power generation methods which include thermal power, hydroelectric power, wind power and solar power. The unpredictability of renewable power generation has driven the need for models which can analyze the demand and supply data and make proper adjustment in the control points to ensure reliability of the electric power grid. These grids have been given a special name, smart grids. Smart grids have systems that are powered by AI to detect faults, energy thefts and prevent brownouts. Several AI models are also used to differentiate between physical power failures and cyberattacks on the grid. These models are further used to maintain the voltage and frequency in the grid using data collected from various sensors installed. These models then issue commands to the controllers which control the physical operations.

Weren’t you amazed when you saw TARS and CASE in Interstellar, Jarvis in Iron Man? Scientists are working on developing such AI powered assistants to help astronauts in their maneuvering operations in space. Apart from these they will be capable of analyzing astronaut’s health and suggest proper medications in case of emergency. The experience would almost be like having a human counterpart with you which knows the intricacies of the human body and behaviour. Ever heard of the space debris problem? Space debris is basically the used rocket parts, nuts, bolts and other parts of space equipment that orbits the earth with dangerous velocities. They are capable of destroying an instrument panel on a spacecraft. To accurately determine their trajectories scientists are developing artificial neural networks. In 2018 NASA collaborated with Intel to develop a system powered by AI that would help astronauts find the easiest and shortest route to the destination on the surface of any celestial body. This would help astronauts efficiently use their limited precious resources onboard.  

AI is also speeding up the archaeology industry by running artificial intelligence and computer vision algorithms on satellite imagery to identify archaeological sites on the planet. The manual and tiresome work of analyzing each image is also being automated with the use of AI helping scientists to focus more on tracing the history of the site. The utilization of AI by archaeologists has led to some exciting new finds in recent years. This includes the discovery of historical settlements in Madagascar and earthen mounds created by prehistoric North American populations. AI also helps in determining the chemical composition of artifacts, recreation of damaged artifacts and in interpreting various linguistic clues in the ancient paintings.

AI is also being used to design election campaigns all around the world. Be it Donald Trump's presidential victory in 2016 or the landslide victory of Narendra Modi in 2014 we all are aware of the power of AI in politics. AI can be used by policymakers to predict the trajectory of a country's economy so that we are able to put proper measures in place to prevent downfalls. It can be used to analyze the population data from census to create a better democratic society that empowers every individual. AI can be used to automate the humongous clerical work that is there in government offices and use the precious human capital in implementing action plans on ground. AI can also be used to assist in building foolproof diplomatic strategies for the country.  

I have just focused on a small number of fields that utilize AI to drive their processes. Through this article I hope that your perception of AI as the use of computer vision and natural language processing for traditional tasks like self-driving cars, recommendation engines, translators etc has been broadened. To me AI is just a mathematical tool that can be used to analyze data from various natural and artificial processes to create a better and reliable ecosystem of life on earth.

 

 

 


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