• Question: What is AI?

    • Keywords:
    Asked by Lols on 20 Jan 2020.
    • Photo: Maja Popovic

      Maja Popovic answered on 20 Jan 2020:

      It’s artificial intelligence, intelligence of machines, as opposed to intelligence of humans (natural intelligence).

      Some examples of AI are robots, self-driving cars, computers playing chess, computers translating languages, etc.

      It is not necessarily connected with maths (for example, a robot can learn a set of rules in order to do its task, without any maths), but it very often is.

    • Photo: Giuseppe Cotugno

      Giuseppe Cotugno answered on 21 Jan 2020:

      AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. Despite the evocative name, most of AI deals with search problems e.g. find the best route to go to the supermarket, find faces in an image, find what a technician is about to do next, find a diagnosis given some symptoms etc.

      AI must not be confused with robotics. The latter is all about moving things and interacting with the environment and how to build robots e.g. how to move an arm to grasp and object, how to navigate a room etc.

      Robotics can benefit from using AI algorithms to solve the most advanced problems a robot can face (e.g. how to assemble a lego). However, most of the effort in robotics, for the present day, is having the robot doing basic activities like grasping an tool correctly to use it as it is meant to be.

Comments