Table of Contents
Introduction
Artificial Intelligence (AI) still sort of feels like a technology that belongs in science-fiction movies at times.
The idea that we can train and teach machines and computers to do so many complex tasks – automatically and on autopilot – just feels totally foreign, but it is an ever increasing reality of our day-to-day lives.
In fact, AI technology has never been as advanced as it is today it’s only getting more refined and more powerful by the minute. We are seeing widespread adaptation of AI solutions that are transforming our world across the board, some of them overtly and some of them subtly – but the impact is undeniable.
Below we highlight five of the most powerful and influential AI technologies that are reshaping our modern world and will continue to do so for years and years to come.
The 5 Powerful AI Technologies
AI Healthcare Solutions
Nowhere else is artificial intelligence as important and as potentially life-saving as it is in the world of healthcare.
Whether medical experts are using AI for improved diagnostics and diagnosis tools, using it to better understand and combat disease and viruses, or using it to better analyze and create new treatments and cures the world of AI is tightly woven into the fabric of our modern medical community.
AI advanced healthcare solutions are already responsible for a number of major breakthroughs that wouldn’t have been possible without this amazing computing solution. It’s going to be responsible for humans living longer, healthier lives – and major breakthroughs are just around the corner.
Big Data Crunching
A handful of years ago the buzzword in the technology world was “Big Data” as startups and technology giants like a really started to wrap their head around just how important – and just how valuable – their aggregate collection of data on the decisions humans make online and the reasons behind them really was.
At the same time, without machine learning and AI tools to sift through all of this data (there’s a reason why it’s called “Big Data” in the first place, after all) all of that information and all of those resources would have been wasted completely.
Today though, thanks to the way that machine learning can quickly analyze information – and make accurate predictions based off of all that it learns and develops through this data analyzing – companies large and small have an opportunity to build the future faster.
Virtual Assistant Technologies
Virtual Assistant technologies – like Siri from Apple, Cortana from Microsoft, and the Google Assistant from the folks at Google – only ever existed in the world of Science Fiction until about 10 years ago.
The fact that we all have an opportunity to ask questions of our phone, tablet, or smart speakers (as well as our remote controls for media players, etc.) and actually get legitimate and highly relevant answers back is nothing short of amazing.
Virtual Assistant technologies are still in their infancy (only about a decade old at this point) and are only going to be further refined and improved on in the future. It won’t be long at all until the information that we are able to get from these tools is even more accurate, even more relevant, and related to even more complex questions.
We are only a few years away – maybe a decade or so – from having legitimate conversations without machines thanks to artificial intelligence.
Automatic Translation Technology
Nothing has brought our world together faster than the internet, making instant communication all over the world possible in ways that just wasn’t ever even conceived of beforehand.
Email revolutionized communication channels, instant messaging took that a step further, and today the fact that we have so many different ways to reach out and communicate to one another instantly – through text, voice, and video – is nothing short of amazing.
At the same time, the number one hang up for being able to communicate with the world at large through the internet are the multitude of languages we all speak and write.
Artificial intelligence is tackling that, too.
There are some amazing applications of AI that are designed specifically to read, understand, and translate a multitude of different languages – instantly and on-the-fly – so that everyone involved in an online conversation can see responses in real time, in their native language, with absolutely zero issue along the way.
This is democratizing communication and knowledge online in a major way, ripping down old barriers between cultures and people that existed just because we weren’t able to effectively communicate with one another universally.
The impact that this technology has on the world is already being felt, but the fact that we may one day have a “shared language” without having to abandon our own languages is really something special to think about.
Robotics
Artificial intelligence and robotics go hand-in-hand with one another, and we are already seeing some pretty amazing advancements in these two technologies used in concert with each other.
Boston Dynamics is one of the major players in this arena, developing and designing robots that are able to assist the military, that are going to have commercial applications, and are even going to be able to be used in residential settings – think Rosie from The Jetsons – sooner rather than later.
Not only is artificial intelligence allowing for these robots to sort of “think for themselves”, but the technology is also allowing for smoother application and interfacing with existing “dumb technologies”, too.
This is all coming to a confluence to usher in the age of the Internet of Things, potentially setting up a game changing new era of technology where everything is interconnected – everything is online – and everything is a little smarter, little more efficient, and a little more useful than it would have been without the help of artificial intelligence.
Closing Thoughts
At the end of the day, it’s important to remind ourselves that even though we have made some very incredible breakthroughs in the world of artificial intelligence we are still only barely beginning to scratch the surface of all that this technology makes possible.
AI remains in its infancy and certainly isn’t going to look the same – or even recognizable – in 10 years, 20 years, or 50 years down the line.
We are really starting to explore the potential of humanity through the tools that are going to change our lives forever right now. This is a very exciting time in human history as we begin to tinker and toy with “teaching” machines to help us more effectively, and the potential for these kinds of breakthrough solutions to revolutionize our world is skyhigh.
Sure, there is some risk and certainly some nervousness throughout the technology community about how things are going to unfold in the future. Plenty of naysayers claim that we are simply building the doomsday scenario played out in “The Terminator” movies, too.
It’s much more likely, however, that we end up creating life altering – for the better – solutions with the help of artificial intelligence that improve the lives of billions of people on this little blue marble we call planet Earth. New breakthroughs are always right around the corner in the world of artificial intelligence. The fact that many of them are ushered in thanks to already existing artificial intelligence solutions like the ones we highlighted above shouldn’t fly under the radar.
References
- https://blog.adext.com/artificial-intelligence-technologies-2019/
- https://www.sas.com/en_us/insights/articles/analytics/five-ai-technologies.html
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/12/03/5-important-artificial-intelligence-predictions-for-2019-everyone-should-read/
- https://www.edureka.co/blog/top-15-hot-artificial-intelligence-technologies/
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