AI is one of the most popular talked about technologies today. For business, this technology introduces capabilities that innovative business and technology leadership can utilise to introduce new dimensions and abilities within service and product design and delivery.

Unfortunately, a lot of the real business value is locked up behind the terminology hype, inflated expectations and insecure warnings of machine control.

It is impossible to get the value from something that is not understood. So lets cut through the hype and focus to understand AI’s objectives and the key capabilities that this exciting technology enables.

There are many definitions of AI as discussed in the blog post “What is Artificial Intelligence: Definitions“.

Keeping it simple: “AI is using computers to do things that normally would have required human intelligence.” With this definition in mind, there are basically three things that AI is aiming to achieve.

3 AI Objectives

• Capturing Information
• Determine what is happening
• Understand why it is happening

Lets use an example to demonstrate this…

As humans we are constantly gathering data through our senses which is converted by our brain into information which is interpreted for understanding and potential action. You can for example identify an object through site, turn it into information and identify the object instantly as, for example, a lion. In conjunction, additional data associated with the object at the present time, for example the lion is running after a person yelling for help, enables us to identify danger and to take immediate action…

For a machine, this process is very complex and requires large amounts of data, programming/training and processing power. Today, technology is so advanced that small computers like smart phones can capture a photo, identify a face and link it to a name. This is achieved not just through the power the smart phone but through the capabilities of AI, made available through services like facebook supported by an IT platform including, a fast internet connection, cloud computing power and storage.

To determine what is happening the machine might use Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to extract the words from a sound file and try to determine meaning or intent, hence working out that the person is running away from a lion and shouting for you to run away as well.

Why the lion is chasing and why the person is running away, is not known by the machine. Although the machine can capture information and determine what is happening, it does not understand why it is happening within full context – it is merely processing data. This reasoning ability, to bring understanding to a situation, is something that the human brain does very well.

Dispite all the technological advancements, can machines today only achieve the first two of the thee AI objectives. With this in mind, let’s explore the eight AI capabilities relevant and ready for use, today.

8 AI Capabilities

• Capturing Information
  • 1. Image Recognition
  • 2. Speech Recognition
  • 3. Data Search
  • 4. Data Patterns
• Determine what is happening
  • 5. Language Understanding
  • 6. Thought/Decision Process
  • 7. Prediction
• Understand why it is happening
  • 8. Understanding

1. Image Recognition

This is the capability for a machine to identify/recognise an image. This is based on Machine Learning and requires millions of images to train the machine requiring lots of storage and fast processing power.

2. Speech Recognition

The machine takes a sound file and encodes it into text.

3. Search

The machine identifies words or sentences which are matched with relevant content within a large about of data. Once these word matches are found it can trigger further AI capabilities.

4. Patterns

Machines can process and spot patterns in large amounts of data which can be combinations of sound, image or text. This surpasses the capability of humans, literally seeing the woods from the trees.

5. Language Understanding

The AI capability to understand human language is called Natural Language Understanding or NLU.

6. Thought/Decision Processing

Knowledge Maps connects concepts (i.e. person, vehicle) with instances (i.e. John, BMW) and relationships (i.e. favourite vehicle). Varying different relationships by weight and/or probabilities of likelihood cn fine tune the system to make recommendations when interacted with. Knowledge Maps are not decision trees as the entry point of interaction can be at any point within the knowledge map as long as a clear goal has been defined (i.e. What is John’s favourite vehicle?)

7. Prediction

Predictive analytics is not a new concept and the AI prediction capability basically takes a view on historic data patterns and matches it with a new piece of data to predict a similar outcome based on the past.

8. Understanding

Falling under the third objective of AI – Understand what is happening, this capability is not currently commercially available.

To Conclude

In understanding the capabilities of AI you can now look beyond the hype, be realistic and identify which AI capabilities are right to enhance your business.

In a future blog post, we’ll examine some real live examples of how these AI capabilities can be used to bring business value.

Also read:

• Humans are Smarter than any Type of AI
• The Rise of the Bots
• What is Artificial Intelligence: Definitions
• Insightful Quotes on Artificial Intelligence