Artificial Intelligence Case Study
Artificial Intelligence Artificial Intelligence Growing up, I watched and enjoyed movies such as Short Circuit, Space Camp, and the Terminator. There would be no doubt in my mind that we as humans would be able to create artificial intelligence. I figured it was a no brainer as a watched the robots on the big screen think and make decisions on their own without any human input. Later on, as an adult you begin to realize that movies are fiction and it would take a very intelligent human to create artificial life that could make its own decisions and function like a human.
With the help of Hollywood, when we think of artificial intelligence, we tend to think of immense robots that walk, talk, appear human, and also make friends with people such as a human would do. We need to examine the meaning of the word artificial intelligence. All textbooks define the field as “the study and design of intelligent agents” where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956, defines it as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines. Reading these definitions brings a greater understanding as to what artificial intelligence is and the fact remains that it has been around a lot longer than we think.
I remember my mother buying a vacuum in 2002 called the iRobot. It would roam around the house without a handle or a remote control and vacuum the carpet. The iRobot would know when to stop and turn and it would beep when it was full of dirt so you could empty it. If we look at what the definition of artificial intelligence is, then the iRobot falls into this category. There are many more inventions like this that fall under this category.
In 2009 a humanoid robot named TOPIO Played table tennis, a robot named ASIMO used sensors and intelligent algorithms to walk steps, KISMET was a robot with rudimentary social skills, and in 2011, on the quiz show Jeopardy, two humans played against an artificial intelligence called Watson. The list goes on and on, so the question remains, “is it possible to create artificial intelligence? ” the answer is yes! We wonder if a human would have to always plug it into the wall to charge the battery or simply push the start button. Unless we can make a battery that can last as long as a human heart, the answer is, probably not.
