What Progress Has Been Made With Artificial Intelligence? Essay

Introduction

Today, it is hard to imagine a modern world without technologies and sustainable development. Certain progress and new achievements are usually expected in various industries and fields, and people’s lives depend on the results. Artificial intelligence was probably one of the best and most significant discoveries in the 20th century. Machines were proved to have intelligence along with their abilities to interpret data, set and achieve goals, and complete tasks. Several problems and concerns, including planning, control, and perception, exist in the field of computer science. Artificial intelligence is a solution with certain positive and negative aspects.

Many people find this technological success as a realization of multiple dreams and human demands. Still, some groups call into question the need for such techniques although their evolution remains consistent and reasonable. This research paper aims to define the scope of artificial intelligence progress by analyzing its history, current benefits and challenges, and further applications from business or entertainment perspectives.

Essence and Background of Artificial Technology

Many technologies were developed by people to facilitate their lives, increase productivity, and improve the quality of their work. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the transformative technologies available today (Marr). According to Dunjko and Briegel, AI contains a variety of fields and concepts, including the necessity to understand human capacities, abstract all the aspects of work, and realize similar aptitudes (simulation) in machines (6). AI techniques are frequently applied in such spheres as medicine, education, economics, and engineering.

First attempts to create intelligent machines were made in the middle of the 20th century; however, the interest in this field had roots from ancient times. Alan Turing was a pioneer in the AI industry who was known due to the creation of the test to check machine intelligence (Dunjko and Briegel 58). The Turing test compares the intelligent behaviors of machines to those of humans by judging human-machine conversations. This test was defined as a classic evaluator of the effectiveness of AI technologies, proving the correctness of the chosen direction (Müller and Bostrom 559).

Five years later, John McCarthy coined the term “artificial intelligence” and explained it as an ability of the machine to stimulate any features of human intelligence” (Müller and Bostrom 555). This concept was turned into a guiding idea that could be discussed through the prism of computationalism and connectionism. Computationalism is the possibility to perform mental functions and formal operations on symbols, and connectionism identifies mental and behavioral phenomena in simple unit networks where mimicking is applied (Dunjko and Briegel 6). Industrial and personal robots, chatbots, and personal assistants were integrated with time.

Benefits and Challenges

As well as any technology that becomes a crucial part of human life, AI has its pros and cons that have been revealed during its progress. People continue conducting investigations to realize if AI is a threat or a helpful tool for a modern citizen. Firstly, progress makes it possible to reduce the number of mistakes and increase stable and effective algorithms. For example, a collection of quantum algorithms can be used to complete linear algebra tasks, succeed in simulation, and compute properties (Dunjko and Briegel 4).

In business, AI strategies are created to identify the core of a working process and make a decision deprived of additional emotions, unnecessary background information, and personal judgments (Marr). Quick and correct decisions, continuous work (no need to take some rest compared to humans), and the possibility to function even in risky situations are the benefits of modern AI technologies.

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