Artificial intelligence, or AI, can be thought of as a field of computer science focused on creating machines capable of performing tasks just as a human might. Although the human brain has yet to be replicated through technology, the development of AI is becoming increasingly universal and competitive. Take the various Global AI Challenges, for example, which aim at creating discoveries and advances in the field of smart technology. 

Interestingly enough, there are a handful of people who fear the development of self-learning technology. Anxiety about AI isn’t too difficult to understand. The idea of humanity ending up in stasis pods like those in The Matrix and encountering characters such as the Terminator is not very appealing. However, we must remove ourselves from the movie screens and consider the fact that these assumptions are merely hypothetical. As stated by Matthew Stewart on TowardsDataScience, there are  multiple limitations that prevent AI from reaching a level where it could exceed the learning capabilities of even a human baby. While AI has been progressing at an incredible rate, factors such as ethics (are machines living creatures?) and “bad data” (is my data enough/reliable?) serve as a bottleneck for AI development.

It would be far more appropriate to consider the benefits that AI have given us throughout these years, rather than to dwell on unproven theories. In many industries, labour that involves assembly and other dangerous tasks have been assisted by automated machines. This is not only economic for the companies that use AI in industrial work, but also safe for workers that could potentially injure themselves if put in the same position. Additionally, AI-powered technologies such as hazard detection and smart footage can limit the risks, as well as increase efficiency for construction jobs that require human labour. 

In our daily lives, advancements in AI have allowed us to take more control over our daily lives. Smart weather forecasting, for example, allows us to accurately predict bad weather as far as two weeks from today. Artificial intelligence algorithms in the medical field can help to accurately identify areas on the human body that doctors might overlook. Other areas that AI has improved can be found in transportation, education, the media, and even the devices that you are using to read this blog post. 

At Sprout AI, we aim to encourage youth to embrace AI and to recognize what AI has been able to do for people over the past 64 years, ever since its introduction as a field of science. By teaching young students to innovate in the field of AI, we can help to shape a future where AI developers create the safest and most efficient artificial intelligence technology. 

Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic for decades. We keep hearing this topic brought up again and again. Recently it has been advancing so quickly, sometimes we forget to slow down a bit and reflect on what we are doing.

Even 10 years ago, artificial intelligence was only a fictional idea for most people. It was only, wow wouldn’t it be cool to have robots that did what you asked them to, self-driving cars, self-cleaning broom, robot pets, self-operating houses that cooked dinner and did the laundry. Stories were probably where many of these ideas begin. Take Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein”or Terminator for example.

Now, the landscape of AI has changed a lot. In 2012, an AI program developed by Alex Krizhevsky, Ilya Sutskever and Geoffrey Hinton from the University of Toronto won the ImageNet competition by being able to accurately recognize 14 random million images. In 2015, AlphaGo developed by Deepmind Technologies was able to beat a Go world champion in a game of Go. Now AI has become useful for just about anything! It was forecasted by Grand View Research that the global AI market was 25.18 billion USD in 2017 and will become 667 billion USD by 2027!

Even now, in the COVID-19 pandemic, AI researchers are helping Stanford research about their mRNA vaccine against the coronavirus.

So when people hear “artificial intelligence” most automatically think of use cases like the ones mentioned. However, as said by uncle Ben in Spider-Man, “ With great power comes great responsibility”. When it comes to AI, there have been concerns about problems such as bias and privacy concerns and raises questions about ethical AI. Microsoft’s chatbot gone wrong, and twitter’s preview image cropper are two cases of the things that can go wrong with AI.

At Sprout AI, we want to bring AI to more youth and get them thinking about responsible AI because technology is becoming more and more involved with our everyday lives. In our blogs, we write and discuss different use cases of AI mainly relevant to technology that will impact youth, promote social fairness and help the environment. Through our various events, we teach and empower youth to explore the endless possibilities that AI can do to change the world. The creativity and imagination of youth are always endless, and we can’t wait to see what ideas they envision for our future with AI.

With AI becoming increasingly popular, it is important for everyone to understand the basic concept and think for themselves on what technology is ethical or not.

WRITTEN BY Sprout AI