Computers that can think for themselves – an AI explainer for kids by The Week Junior

Greater than 50 years in the past, a well-known British band known as the Beatles break up up. They haven’t recorded any music collectively since then, however synthetic intelligence (AI) has helped to create one final Beatles music.

That is simply one of many ways in which AI is altering the world and the way we dwell – with sensible voice assistants, similar to Siri and Alexa, self-driving automobiles and software program that may write essays and songs. As expertise improves, the usage of AI is spreading.

“Artificial intelligence” is a pc system that may do issues that normally require human intelligence. These embody fixing issues, making selections and studying. AI might be taught expertise utilizing a course of known as machine studying. People give the system info, similar to books, pictures or movies, to coach it. The extra information the system research, the higher it could do its job. AI and robotics aren’t the identical – not all robots are clever. Some are simply programmed to hold out primary duties that do not require intelligence.

The invention of AI

Within the twentieth century, scientists began to wonder if computers could think like us. In 1950, the British mathematician Alan Turing created the “Turing check” to see whether or not a pc is clever. Throughout this, a human decide places inquiries to an individual and a pc on the identical time. Each reply the questions, and the decide should determine which solutions got here from the human. If the decide cannot inform the 2 aside, the pc is clever. Many individuals consider AIs that may write, just like the ChatGPT system, have already handed this check.

How AI is getting used

AI is a part of on a regular basis life. It could possibly research a number of info and from that work out what’s more likely to occur subsequent. Self-driving cars, for instance, use AI to make selections. Sensors detect an individual crossing the highway and inform the automobile to cease.

While you watch Netflix, AI can see which TV exhibits you want and recommend others you may get pleasure from. In hospitals, AI can research details about 1000’s of individuals to work out what could be improper with a affected person from their check outcomes.

Instruments like ChatGPT can write pc code, essays, tales and even clear up maths issues. ChatGPT makes use of current work to create its personal. Equally, for the brand new Beatles music, AI took a recording of singer John Lennon’s voice from an old style cassette tape and used it in a brand new means.

The way forward for AI

Some folks fear about how AI may have an effect on their jobs. If computer systems can create pictures, music and textual content, might artists, musicians and writers in the future get replaced? Many individuals additionally concern that AI could possibly be used to invent and unfold very convincing lies. Even those that work in AI say there ought to be guidelines about how it’s used.

Nonetheless, AI can spark creativity too. An exhibition known as Beyond the Light in New York led guests by way of the cosmos, due to an AI that used photos from the James Webb Area Telescope. AI is superb at suggesting medicine to deal with ailments and may even invent new medicines. It could possibly assist us combat local weather change by discovering intelligent methods to scale back our power use, and serving to us get extra out of photo voltaic panels and wind generators. At some point it would even discover a method to clear up our power wants utterly by serving to us to recreate nuclear fusion, the method utilized by the Solar to create warmth and lightweight.

Three large steps for synthetic intelligence

• Chess champion crushed: On 11 Could 1997, a pc known as Deep Blue beat the world chess champion, Garry Kasparov. Deep Blue might contemplate as much as 200 million chess positions a second and was so good that Kasparov believed it will need to have been managed by an individual.
• Laptop wins TV sport present: In 2011, a supercomputer known as Watson gained Jeopardy!, a TV sport present. Watson was up in opposition to two of probably the most profitable gamers to participate within the present – however nonetheless beat them. The pc was skilled for greater than three years to reply Jeopardy!‘s riddles and complex questions.
• The world’s first robotic citizen: In 2016, an organization known as Hanson Robotics activated the world’s first robotic citizen, Sophia. Her software program makes use of AI to assist her speak to folks and use facial expressions. In 2017, she was made a citizen of Saudi Arabia. Hanson Robotics has created extra robots, together with Grace, a nurse, and Desdemona, a poet.

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