programming-for-dummies

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Applications in Artificial Intelligence
Applications in Artificial Intelligence
Initially, artificial intelligence had grand plans that bordered on science fiction.
Computer scientists had visions of intelligent computers that could carry on
spoken conversations while being fully conscious of their own thoughts. The
reality proved much less dramatic. Instead of intelligent computers, we just
have faster ones. Instead of thinking machines, we still have computers that
are only faster than before, but no closer to consciousness than before.
Although artificial intelligence never lived up to its initial dreams, its applications
have seeped into ordinary use. Spam filters are one simple way that
machine learning has been put to use along with game-playing techniques
for making smarter computer-generated opponents in video games.
Intrusion detection systems use a primitive form of an expert system to determine
whether a computer hacker has penetrated a computer network,
whereas many financial traders on Wall Street use neural networks to track the
movement of stocks and commodities to figure out how to predict future stock
prices. Perhaps the ultimate goal of artificial intelligence is to create thinking
robots that can not only move on their own but also reason for themselves.
Whether computer scientists can ever create an actual thinking machine is
beside the point. The real use for artificial intelligence isn’t in re-creating
human brains in electronic form, but in finding ways to make computers help
us solve numerous tasks on their own. The more problems computers can
solve without human supervision, the more time people can spend working on
more difficult problems that computers can’t solve — at least not yet.