Almost all of us use AI daily – even if we don’t realise it! By Lizzie Brandon
Just as Tim Berners-Lee is “the father of the World Wide Web”, Alan Turing is arguably the father of modern computer science. The logician and mathematician was a pivotal member of the Bletchley Park team, which cracked the German ciphers during World War Two. But prior to this, in the 1930s, Turing had described “an abstract computing machine consisting of limitless memory and a scanner that moves back and forth through the memory, symbol by symbol, reading what it finds and writing further symbols”.
This “stored programme” concept, where the machine is operating on, modifying or improving its own programming, is known as the “Turing machine” – and it’s the model for all modern computers.
In 1947, Turing presented possibly the first public lecture discussing computer intelligence, saying: “What we want is a machine that can learn from experience,” and that the “possibility of letting the machine alter its own instructions provides the mechanism for this.” The following year, his unpublished paper Intelligent Machinery introduced many of the central concepts of AI. Then, in 1950, he published Computing Machinery and Intelligence, which proposed “the imitation game”, later known as the “Turing Test”.
However, it wasn’t Alan Turing who coined the term artificial intelligence. That honour goes to John McCarthy (Dartmouth College), Marvin Minsky (Harvard University), Nathaniel Rochester (IBM), and Claude Shannon (Bell Telephone Laboratories) in their 1955 proposal for a “2-man, 10-month study of artificial intelligence”. The subsequent workshop in July and August 1956 is widely regarded as the official birthdate of this new field of technology.
Since then, AI has advanced in leaps and bounds.
Portrait of Alan Turning | Midjourney AI, prompted by Netha Hussain, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
What is artificial intelligence?
IBM defines AI as “technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human intelligence and problem-solving capabilities.” So, in theory, if you ask AI a question, it will come up with a reasonable answer.
You’re likely already doing this every day – knowingly or unknowingly.
The ways AI is part of our everyday lives
In-car navigation
Apps like Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze use real-time traffic information to create the most efficient route to your chosen destination. They can also update their initial route plan if incidents occur along the way.
Social media
Platforms like Facebook and Instagram use algorithms to fill your news feeds with content they think will appeal based on your past preferences and behaviours. AI is also being used to weed out fake news, spam, and abusive content. (Although, many might say this aspect needs more work.)
Smart assistants
“Hey Siri, what’s the weather forecast in Palmerston North tomorrow?” “Alexa, what’s on at the local cinema?” AI-powered systems like this are increasingly common in households. Smart appliances are becoming more widely available, too, such as ovens that monitor food as it cooks.
Website “live chat”
Most customer-focused websites now offer real-time communication to help with purchases, manage bookings, or answer basic queries. Chances are, you’ll “chat” with a bot before you speak to a real person – if, in fact, you need to get that far. The AI will have prescribed responses, and their capacity to help has its limits, but these conversations are more seamless than they were even a year ago. It’s getting harder to spot the bot.
Healthcare
This is huge, encompassing real-time health monitoring, patient care, diagnostics, and treatment plans.
Wearable devices (e.g., Fitbit and Apple Watch) can track and analyse the user’s health data, offer personalised health advice, monitor your fitness levels, and alert you to potential issues.
To help streamline organisational processes, AI systems search massive medical databases of research and patient information almost instantly to help create personalised treatment plans.
AUT reports that “some medical facilities use AI to spot embolisms and signs of stroke, which is crucial for minimising the risk of brain damage.”
But perhaps the most exciting and powerful application is when AI and human specialists work in partnership. AI algorithms can significantly help radiologists identify malignant tumours. Indeed, according to The Lancet Oncology: “Swedish research found that using AI-supported analysis of mammograms, alongside either one or two radiologists, was as good as using two radiologists without AI and led to 20 per cent more cancers being detected.”
Crime prevention
If healthcare is “the big one”, then crime prevention could be “the controversial one”. We’ll discuss why a little further down the page.
For now, here are a couple of positives. Intelligent doorbells and security devices can help protect your home. AI can learn the difference between “normal” movement, like your cat jumping off its scratcher, and a potential intruder.
And we’ve talked previously in ShoreLines about the devastating financial and emotional cost of scams.
NetSafe has recently relaunched its Re:Scam AI tool, created to “waste scammers’ time so they can’t target their next victims”.
Suspicious emails can be sent to me@rescam.org. The system identifies scams and begins a never-ending conversation. With multiple personalities, an evolving vocabulary, and deliberately imperfect grammar, scammers shouldn’t know they’re talking to Netsafe’s “specialist scam baiting intelligence system”.
What could possibly go wrong?
Science fiction books and movies, such as The Terminator, M3GAN, and Blade Runner, portray frankly terrifying scenarios where humans lose control of the machines they’ve created. Could that really happen? Experts agree that the chances are, at least for now, close to zero – which is a relief!
However, there are plenty of issues to contend with today.
In the words of Last Week Tonight’s always-on-point John Oliver: “The problem with AI right now isn’t that it’s smart — it’s that it is stupid in ways that we can’t always predict.”
He particularly highlighted AI’s potential for bias, which has, unfortunately, been well documented. For example, advertising and image generators have been known to reinforce job role gender bias, often favouring men in higher paid, more senior roles.
Why is this?
AI learns from what it’s given. Biased input (however unintended) equals biased output. To put it crudely, if you feed it rubbish, you’ll get rubbish at the other end.
In one study, when AI was being trialled to help detect melanoma, it was found to be more likely to flag images with rulers as malignant.
Racial bias with facial recognition is a serious problem, too. Research in the US suggests that AI can be more than 99 per cent accurate in recognising white male faces but only 35 per cent accurate for Black women.
Is AI coming for my job?
Potentially, yes. A recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report concluded that up to 60 per cent of jobs will be affected by AI in the next few years.
But affected doesn’t necessarily mean replaced.
Certainly, AI could replace some roles completely, such as data entry, warehouse picking, and retail cashiers. However, it has the capacity to make other roles more interesting and productive by removing the more monotonous aspects.
The likes of accountants, market researchers, and customer service representatives could incorporate AI in their jobs, getting it to search for and collate information, complete standard forms or boilerplate text, and answer straightforward queries – freeing up their time to focus on complex or sensitive matters.
Because unlike AI, a real person has the ability to understand subtlety and nuance, empathise, be flexible, trust their intuition, apply cultural sensitivity, and, dare we say, use common sense.
Right now – and here’s perhaps the most reassuring fact – sometimes only a human will suffice.
All images used in this article were generated with AI.
