Artificial Intelligence The Big Picture

• Published in: Resonance Vol. 25; no. 1; pp. 43 - 58
• Main Author: Khemani, Deepak
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New Delhi Springer India 2020
• Subjects: Education; General Article; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Science; Science Education; language; logic; machine learning; Search; knowledge; agents
• ISSN: 0971-8044; 0973-712X
• DOI: 10.1007/s12045-019-0921-2

In the first week of the year 2020, we got the news that AI now outperforms doctors in detecting breast cancer. This is in line with a continuous stream of news coming from the world of diagnosis and has lent credence to the sentiment that AI is poised to overcome humankind. However, some perceptive observers have commented that recent advances are largely due to the massive increase in both availability of data and computing power. Moreover, it is only a narrow task of classification that has led the news blitz. Classification can be thought of as a stimulus-response process. Human intelligence is much broader. In particular, humans often display a stimulus-deliberation-response cycle. There is much that goes on in the “thinking” phase that was the original aim of AI before the data and speed started dominating applications. The second of the two-part article on AI traces the evolution in the field since the Dartmouth conference, and takes stock of where we are on the road to thinking machines.