Rick Mills – "The Promise of AI" Prospector News

In'The Terminator' series of action films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, a cybernetic organism (cyborg) is programmed from the future to go back in time and kill the mother of the scientist who leads the fight against Skynet, an artificial intelligence system that will cause a nuclear holocaust. Terrifying and at times comical ("I'll be back", "Make my day") The Terminator cyborg was among the first presentations of artificial intelligence (AI) to a global audience. While numerous facets of AI have been developed over the past couple of decades, all with positive outcomes, the fear of AI being programmed to do something devastating to the human race, of computers "going rogue", continues to persist. On the other hand, AI holds tremendous potential for benefiting humanity in ways we are only just starting to recognize. This article gives an overview of artificial intelligence including some of its most interesting manifestations. The first step is defining what we mean by artificial intelligence. One definition of AI is "the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computers." Such processes include learning by acquiring information, understanding the rules around using that information, employing reasoning to reach conclusions, and self-correcting.