How Does Artificial Intelligence Work?

28 Sep 2020
9 min read

A guide to help you increase your profit with AI solutions for business.

Humans have dreamt about creating intelligent machines since ancient times – but only made the first attempts to actually do this in the early 50s. Now, in 2020, we already have a number of tools at our disposal to turn those dreams into reality. However, the topic is still quite complex. How does Artificial Intelligence work? We’re here to answer that question.

Artificial Intelligence, producing machines able to think and perform like humans, is already transforming a number of industries and spectacularly improving our daily lives. Check out how AI can be used in practice and which AI technologies you can use to start a profitable business.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

To keep it short, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an interdisciplinary science focused on building machines able to complete tasks that typically require human intelligence. Machines equipped with this technology are capable of learning from experience, processing data, and recognizing patterns in a manner which successfully imitates human behaviour.

Crucially, AI is able to perform those tasks without being explicitly instructed – its algorithms process data similarly to natural intelligence. Thus, AI can act rationally, making reasonable decisions and predicting their far-reaching consequences – which makes machines even smarter, more effective and accurate in performance than humans.

Where is Artificial Intelligence used?

AI is present in a number of industries and areas of our daily lives – including both business and entertainment. It can be used simply everywhere – wherever analysing, searching for data, pattern-detection, and probabilistic models can be applied. 

As it is able to perform similarly to the human brain, it is widely used in process automation. This helps free up human resources by having repetitive jobs done by a machine. Moreover, it makes it possible to transform and improve various business models, as it provides companies with broad abilities not possible with the use of human force.

Which industries use AI technology?

  • Healthcare – including telemedicine, data maintenance
  • Marketing – including responsive search ads, A/B tests, content recommendations.
  • E-commerce – including analysing human behaviour to save abandoned carts, product recommendations, stock and inventory analysis, online shop automation.
  • Education – including appointment scheduling, learning and reading assistance, supporting children with disabilities. 
  • Finance and Banking – including predicting cash-flow events, financial advisory for customers, building saving habits and credit models.
  • Entertainment – including movies and music recommendations for Netflix, Spotify, or YouTube users.

Artificial Intelligence solutions for business

AI, aside from its fantastical philosophical and imagined goals, provides many businesses with a great deal of benefits. It helps automate processes, perform complex business analyses, and deliver predictions and estimations based on the provided input.

All in all, it allows companies to skyrocket their revenues with limited humanforce engagement. To shortly sum up the pros, AI:

  • Helps automate business processes, increasing their effectiveness and accuracy.
  • Is available 24/7 without engaging the human workforce.
  • Reduces the number of human errors in business processes.
  • Takes over repetitive work typically done by employees. 
  • Accelerates the decision-making process by analysing large amounts of data.
  • Improves application security (for example, by verifying biometric data).
  • Provides more effective communication with clients via chatbots and speech analysis.

What are the types of Artificial Intelligence?

Before we proceed with explaining how Artificial Intelligence works, we need to underline the fact that there are different types of AI exploring various scopes of tasks and mechanisms. The technology itself is split into three broad categories:

  • Narrow AI, also called “Weak AI”.
  • Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), also called “General AI”.
  • Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI), also called “Strong AI”.

Narrow AI is usually focused on performing one particular task. In fact, it only imitates human intelligence, and typically operates under a number of limitations. It also requires prior supervision and input delivery. Some examples of Narrow AI include Google search algorithms, image recognition softwares, self-driving cars, or personal assistants like Alexa or Siri. 

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), much more advanced than Narrow AI, is able to solve complex problems by using general intelligence. Its performance imitates the work of the human brain much more accurately, and its scope also is more vast.

Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) is the most advanced type of AI, which not only imitates human intelligence, but also performs self-awareness. It equips machines with emotions, beliefs, and desires typical for humans. Crucially, ASI not only catches up to, but also surpases human abilities. However, in 2020 it’s still in the domain of science fiction, but the next decades may shock the industry.

Each type of Artificial Intelligence represents a different level of performance and various scopes of the used technologies. As AI is an interdisciplinary science, it’s necessary to understand how many processes it actually utilizes – even those far beyond IT.

How does AI work?

In addition to the technical aspects, Artificial Intelligence is based on various disciplines that the human race has been developing for ages. Modern AI is inspired and supported by philosophy, economics, medicine, mathematics, psychology, neuroscience, and more. Building the set of algorithms that can ensure AI’s performance is a complex process of reverse-engineering human capabilities, behaviors, and traits.

Before explaining the mechanism, we need to highlight that AI is even more advanced. To fully grasp how it actually works, it’s critical to understand that it’s built using various IT techniques and tools. Artificial Intelligence is based on a few subdomains that can be applied to a number of projects, and its careful combination results in intelligently-behaving machines. 

How does Artificial Intelligence work? Let’s take a look to find out what kind of mechanisms enable AI’s performance:

  • Machine Learning (ML)
    The scope of this technology is teaching a machine to make decisions based on past experience, structured, and semi-structured input. It deals with analysing data, recognizing patterns, and coming up with reasonable output. It is widely used wherever there is a need to replace repetitive tasks with a machine. 
  • Deep Learning
    Often confused with ML, in fact, this is ML’s specific facet focused on teaching the machine to process data through a special kind of very complex algorithms – neural networks. It is a go-to technique when we want to build intelligent applications dealing with images, videos, text, and sound. To learn more about the difference between Machine Learning and Deep Learning, check out our article:Deep Learning vs Machine Learning.
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP)
    This AI tool is focused on exploring language: reading, interpreting, and producing text. NLP mechanisms are able, not only to understand, but also to respond to the user – logically and correctly. It’s widely used in voice assistants, including Google Assistant.
  • Neural Network
    Neural networks are algorithms built from sequenced blocks, called layers. They are built out of a complex set of algorithms making it possible to process data in many ways, depending on the application. This allows neural networks to handle data as complex as videos, images, and text. The idea of a neural network is loosely based on how a human brain is built
  • Cognitive Computing
    Cognitive Computing is the newest AI mechanism trying to mimic the human brain. It analyses various content, including text, speech, and visual materials – the same way that humans do.
  • Computer Vision
    This part of AI technology is dedicated to studying visual objects. Combined with Deep Learning techniques, Computer Vision is capable of interpreting the content of images and graphics.  

How to choose the right Artificial Intelligence solutions

To successfully decide what kind of AI technology is the best fit for your project, it’s crucial to carefully analyze your business needs, the desired features of the product, and the technological assets at your disposal. 

We will help you to learn more about AI and its opportunities and provide you with professional advice. Our technical team will support you in successfully implementing Artificial Intelligence solutions so you can predict technical issues and quickly start benefiting from your business’s improved performance.

Do not hesitate to get in touch with our team to make the right choice!

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The administrator of your personal data is Miquido sp. z o.o. sp.k.,... with its registered office in Kraków at Zabłocie 43A, 30 - 701. We process the provided information in order to send you a newsletter. The basis for processing of your data is your consent and Miquido’s legitimate interest. You may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us at marketing@miquido.com. You have the right to object, the right to access your data, the right to request rectification, deletion or restriction of data processing. For detailed information on the processing of your personal data, please see Privacy Policy.

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