The Hunt for Artificial Intelligence

1  Artificial Intelligence: Really?

AI is everywhere! There is not an industry, a service, a product that does not advertise its AI capabilities. AI is about to change the world very much like the Internet did at its arrival. The number of articles in the media related to AI is astonishing and consequently, the number of idiocy published is of the same order. Fear is selling well. Fear is driving the news. Which of these two titles will be most read: “AI will increase early cancer detection.” or “AI is sentient[1] and robots will take the world over.”

The question I would like to ask instead is: “What kind of intelligence does AI have?” Indeed, there are many definitions of intelligence and entering this debate could be tortuous. I would argue that most people understand it as “capable of human behaviour; making its own decisions; and very importantly capable of writing the next generation of AI without human intervention.” At least, this is the definition that I will use. In other words, I could keep it simpler with: Can AI have an Intention ? And I mean here: an intention that has not been defined by a human being. A new, self created intention. It is this free intention that I believe is scary. It is the moment we would lose control. It comes back to the sentient question, which I would answer “No” to.

2  Decomposing AI structure

In this series of articles, I will decompose the structure of AI. I will explain its mechanisms. I will expose how we have reached the point where human beings have been able to create a system that they are not capable of comprehend. I will cover the various fields of science that are needed to make an AI system work.

Of course, none of these are dead easy to understand, but since I do not address a room of AI researchers, my aim will be to make it understandable by people with a limited technology knowledge. The challenge will be to make it simple while not simplistic. My aim could be defined as: after reading these articles, the reader will be in a better position to make decisions for his/her business in relation with AI.

3  Contents to come

Since I will be writing and publishing regularly, I cannot say for sure what the content will be, but still, I have some contents in mind:

• Origins of AI (when and how did it appear)
• The various science fields used in AI (mathematics, Language, Vision, etc.)
• The fields of application of AI
• The technological solutions available for an AI project (ML, Deep Learning, etc.)
• How to start and run and AI project

Other topics as they come to my mind or based on the feedback I will receive.

[1] Has consciousness