Question: how will artificial intelligence help to improve our day to day lives?

David Corne answered on 17 Jun 2011:

“Artificial Intelligence” means a collection of different algorithms that computers can use to do clever things – AI techniques have already improved our lives in many, many areas. Some of the earliest fruits of AI are things called “expert systems” – which basically use rules, and sensible reasoning methods, to make decisions about things. In many cases, when you have some medical test or other, the hospital inputs your data and test results into a computer system, and an expert system works out what disease you might have, or how likely you might have a particular disease, or what might be the best treatment for you, and so on. There is even a simple expert system in modern washing machines, using “fuzzy logic”, that makes decisions about which way to spin, how fast to spin, and so on, to keep the load balanced and get as much water out as possible, at the same time trying to cut down on energy use. Banks and credit card companies also regularly use expert systems to decide whether it is safe to lend you money at all, and how much money it is safe to lend you. AI is saving lives all the time – one of my colleagues has used some advanced statistical AI to figure out how best to control outbreaks of infections in hospitals. Using his methods, infections of MRSA (which kills people) in certain wards in Scotland have been cut by half. One subfield of AI is computer vision, where computers can recognise objects in images or videos – this is used all the time to do everything from detecting bad products on an assembly line, through to verifying that the person trying to get into a high-security building is really the person it’s supposed to be, to automatically recognising when you are similing so a photo can be taken. Using similar algorithms, but for recognising patterns in smell rather than images, some airports now use “electric noses” that try to detect naughty things in luggage. Another kind of AI is where we think of it as a walking, talking autonomous robot — this kind of AI tends to be made of many of the algorithms I have been talking about, with extra stuff. At the moment we are not that great at it, and there’s still lots of research going on. Most of this research is about artificial companions that will help elderly or disabled people in their homes – getting them out of chairs, reminding them about taking pills, cleaning, and so on. This kind of thing is comng soon – it is already here, but will get more and more sophisticated. We already have robot vacuum cleaners. Alsom if you are gamer, there is more and more AI in games these days (but still not enough). Sometimes the characters you play against have AI in them, and will try to act clever to avoid capture or whatever.