AI: Serving Millions Daily!

Artificial intelligence (AI) might seem like the realm of science fiction, but you might be surprised to find out that you’re already using it. AI has a huge effect on your life, whether you’re aware of it or not, and its influence is likely to grow in the coming years.

Some examples of AI we are using daily are:

Virtual Personal Assistants

Siri, Google Now, and Cortana are all intelligent digital personal assistants on various platforms (iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile). In short, they help find useful information when you ask for it using your voice; you can say “Where’s the nearest Chinese restaurant?”, “What’s on my schedule today?”, “Remind me to call Jerry at eight o’clock,” and the assistant will respond by finding information, relaying information from your phone, or sending commands to other apps.

Microsoft says that Cortana “continually learns about its user” and that it will eventually develop the ability to anticipate users’ needs. Virtual personal assistants process a huge amount of data from a variety of sources to learn about users and be more effective in helping them organize and track their information.

Video Games

First-person shooters like Far Cry and Call of Duty also make significant use of AI, with enemies that can analyze their environments to find objects or actions that might be beneficial to their survival; they’ll take cover, investigate sounds, use flanking maneuvers, and communicate with other AIs to increase their chances of victory.

Purchase Prediction

Amazon’s anticipatory shipping project hopes to send you items before you need them, completely obviating the need for a last-minute trip to the online store. While that technology isn’t yet in place, brick-and-mortar retailers are using the same ideas with coupons; when you go to the store, you’re often given a number of coupons that have been selected by a predictive analytics algorithm.

Fraud Detection

Have you ever gotten an email or a letter asking you if you made a specific purchase on your credit card? Many banks send these types of communications if they think there’s a chance that fraud may have been committed on your account, and want to make sure that you approve the purchase before sending money over to another company. Artificial intelligence is often the technology deployed to monitor for this type of fraud.

Online Customer Support

Many websites now offer customers the opportunity to chat with a customer support representative while they’re browsing—but not every site actually has a live person on the other end of the line. In many cases, you’re talking to a rudimentary AI.

Perhaps most interestingly, these chat bots need to be adept at understanding natural language, which is a rather difficult proposition; the way in which customers talk and the way in which computers talk is very different, and teaching a machine to translate between the two isn’t easy.

News Generation

Did you know that artificial intelligence programs can write news stories? According to Wired, the AP, Fox, and Yahoo! all use AI to write simple stories like financial summaries, sports recaps, and fantasy sports reports. AI isn’t writing in-depth investigative articles, but it has no problem with very simple articles that don’t require a lot of synthesis.

Music and Movie Recommendation Services

While they’re rather simple when compared to other AI systems, apps like Spotify, Pandora, and Netflix accomplish a useful task: recommending music and movies based on the interests you’ve expressed and judgments you’ve made in the past.

Your smartphone, your car, your bank, and your house all use artificial intelligence on a daily basis; sometimes it’s obvious what its’ doing, like when you ask Siri to get you directions to the nearest gas station. Sometimes it’s less obvious, like when you make an abnormal purchase on your credit card and don’t get a fraud alert from your bank. AI is everywhere, and it’s making a huge difference in our lives every day.

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