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other species such as homo soloensis, homo denisova, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo
floresiensis faded away more than 40,000 years ago. What advantages did Homo sapiens
possess that helped them to flourish while other species are extinct? Apparently a cognitive
revolution (according to Prof. Yuval Harari in his famous book Sapiens) triggered by some
kind of genetic mutation provided Homo Species with more cerebral power and thus they
acquired an ability not possessed by any other species – ability to imagine things that did
not exist. This ability helped them to invent things including powerful communicative
languages, religion, tools and more.
Does current cognitive revolution ushered under various nomenclatures such as artificial
intelligence, cognitive computing etc provide more powers, this time to machines and bring
in unprecedented progress to human life? Are public and private institutions geared towards
initiating, leading and supporting this change? How can leaders at private enterprises reap
the benefit of AI and how do leaders at public organizations and government institutions
create policies and regulations to handle issues arising from growing adoption of AI? It is
imperative that leaders in these organizations are conscious of the latest developments in
the field of artificial intelligence.
Interface: Humans communicate to the outside world through various means – written and
spoken language, vision and signs. Ergo, an AI system should also contain an interface to
mimic this kind of a behavior for two way communication. Speech recognition in Apple Siri
or Natural language Processing involved in Google translators are most common interfaces.
Advanced AI systems such as robots might include more complex interfaces including
sensory capabilities. Needlessly, the interface should be two way, for the AI system to
communicate back to users. Natural Language generation, which is an evolving field within
AI, helps AI systems to communicate back to humans in more natural way. Think of an AI
system that write business performance summary of a company based on annual report
and data from google finance.
Memory Emulation: AI systems cannot be transitory or stateless. AI should be able to
emulate the memory function similar to that of humans. Human brain with nearly 100 billion
neuron can supposedly hold up to 2.5 Petabytes of data. Advancement in storage systems,
both in hardware, algorithms and frameworks (e.g. Hadoop), make processing of really big
data easier and efficient. Similar to human brain, AI system should be able to gather data,
extract relevant meanings, encode appropriately, store and finally retrieve information
efficiently.
Learning: Most crucial part of an AI system that brings machines slightly closer to humans
is continuous learning. How does a recommendation engine (though cannot be considered
as full-fledged AI system) in eCommerce sites works? It uses humongous historical data on
browsing and purchase behavior of website visitors, learns patterns in the data for product
preferences and makes relevant product recommendations. This learning is not one time,
but happens continuously (at regular intervals) whenever chunk of new data is available. In
fact learning is a key component that differentiates current generation of AI systems from
earlier generations (called expert systems). This advancement is made possible mainly
because of prevalence of machine learning algorithms. For example, recently Google
announced that its language translation tool is dramatically improved because of using a
versatile machine learning technique called Deep Learning (which is designed to mimic
brain’s neural networks).
Reasoning and Judgement: This component is where two other components, memory
and Learning, are utilized to act like humans do. For instance, consider a chatbot that
recommends laptops to online visitors. Historical data can be used to learn patterns in
customer preferences (part of learning component). Here previous learning is used to make
judgement on what laptops might be liked by the current customer. This component might
also use simulation and optimization algorithms to weigh in multiple solutions and decide
optimal course of action. This component brings hope to automate advanced tasks such as
planning and judgement that humans can do.
How to effectively adopt Artificial Intelligence in the
organization
As in the case with most of the innovative and forward looking technologies, particularly
those in very initial stages of development, AI as well faces multiple challenges for
successful adoption in the organization. Effective adoption, therefore, involves resolving
those challenges. If you are confused whether Artificial Intelligence is really useful to your
organization, please see the box below. Once you decide to adopt AI, following steps might
be right guidelines to use.
Preparation