History holds many stories of machines coming to life and performing feats unexplained by those who observe them. Geniuses, and gods among humans, pursue with fervent passion the creation of intelligent machines that can do and surpass humankind's works.
Introduction
Welcome fellow Hivians to our next installment in STEM news. I originally entitled this series "Energy News," but I found my mind wandering into other STEM-related areas. In this post, we will be highlighting some news from the world of Artificial Intelligence.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
The question of "what is" artificial intelligence has been in debate for decades. For this article, let's define artificial intelligence as a digital system designed to perform human-level activities. Internet search engines, medical diagnosis, and war are some areas dependent upon the development of AI to bring activities to a higher level of performance.
Internet Search Engines
Internet search engines like Google utilize remarkable software to analyze, understand, and rank websites through much of the normal Internet cosmos (we're not touching deep and dark web searches in this post).
The more popular search engines utilize software that monitoring internet traffic (clicks, keyword inputs, etc.) to determine any website rankings. These engines even have software modeled to understand the human language or even conduct searches by a picture alone.
The imagination is the limit when applying machine learning to tasks normally performed by humans.
Medicine and AI
There are too many applications of AI in medicine, so we'll keep this one brief. In India, at least, where there is a high population of people with diabetes, Google's software plays a critical role in identifying people with eye problems.
Google developed, in conjunction with eye hospitals, a program that utilized machine learning to diagnose patients diabetic retinopathy. Diabetic retinopathy is the degradation of the retina as a result of high blood sugar.
At least one of India's hospitals treats both patients that can pay and not pay. An AI application's benefit will be to quickly determine which eyes require additional screening by more specialized and experienced doctors. Who knows? Perhaps, in the future, AI-driven systems will even schedule visits based upon graded criteria. You wouldn't need to stand or sit in an office for hours or days waiting on your turn to come up.
The application of AI in the field of medicine is certainly impressive.
War
War is where dreams, and common human beings, go to die. Nations may survive. The elite may thrive. However, for you and me, there may be no tomorrow.
In my preparations for this discussion, I started listing AI applications that could aid in improving humanity, but when I reached the topic of war, I just stopped writing. Murderous conflict puts an end to many who might benefit from AI.
U2 Spy Plane
On December 16, 2020, Steven Trevithick for "The Drive" reported that the Air Force accomplished a historic flight where an AI had control over a U2 spyplane's radar system. The AI, dubbed Artu as a star wars reference, even acted as a mission commander during its first test flight.
Utilizing Star Wars' references for the use of AI is quite a clever ploy. Use the name of globally beloved characters fighting an evil empire is certainly better than Terminator-related references.
Aerial Combat
A concerning article that appeared in The Drive, written again by Steven Trevithick, covers an Air Force announcement that is concerning. Sometime in 2021, The Air Force hopes to pit human fighter against an artificially intelligent drone.
The currently in-development project has an ambitious timeline. However, when thinking about it, one has to wonder what will change if it is successful. An AI-guided combat drone, when perfected, will be able to at least out-maneuver any human-piloted craft. It could operate in areas humans couldn't go to and would be lighter and faster.
Life support systems would be unnecessary. Recruitment and training of top-tier humans for training may be a thing of the past.
Also, and what's more disturbing, is that the AI of fiction slowly starts to become a real thing in our lifetime. At least the military is using Star Wars' references for the "good" guys.
In Closing
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Artificial Intelligence development is in full swing, and I have high confidence that these projects will achieve their desired intentions. What's more, the military is in full support of its development and future applications to their mission goals.
Hopefully, we will maintain control of the technology before we allow it to control us. Perhaps the singularity is closer than I originally thought.
Thank you all for reading and I look forward to writing more for you in the future.