The coiner of the term artificial intelligence (AI) passed away last year, but the dream lives on. But, how close are we to that AI goal?  Is there a goal to begin with? Or, are we looking at sky’s the limit and one day we’d be able to sit beside a human-like robot in a subway train on our way to our work? Present-day researchers and projects advancing the possibility of creating a robot that can truly interact like what ECCEROBOT is trying to do?  The far reaching technology cannot tell how much it is going for AI, but the near future seems bright. The quest to innovate around humanlike intelligence is spreading across the globe. Just recently, a researcher in Canada bagged a grand prize worth $100,000 for pioneering machine learning that can mimic functions of the human brain.

SiliconANGLE.com has been following the growth of AI for a fairly long time now. Today, we will look into AI as it’s travelling to various industries such as mobility, Big Data and search.

IBM Watson: AI’s Major Landmark

When IBM’s Watson beat world champions in the American quiz show Jeopardy, it dawned on me that we may be entering the new era of robotics.  After a convincing win against Harvard students in Jeopardy, Watson has risen to popularity and has taken on different jobs. The breakthrough technology was tapped by WellPoint to deliver patient care and diagnostics solutions in reduced costs. Watson becomes a medical consultant for that matter. This year, it landed a position in Wall Street for one of its biggest clients, Citigroup. This makes Watson a financial expert this time around. IBM’s futuristic ideas for high performance computing are now panning out large-scale.

Still within the pursuit of toppling a person’s mind power, human-like robots were created to tackle crosswords and even stand-up comedy.

Mobility, Search and Big Data

The engulfing surge of information from our social networks and all components of our daily lives predominantly happen through our mobile devices. And to transform these data into things that make sense, analysis and management are set in place. This idea has given birth to the infamous SIRI.

According to its maker Apple, the Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface software acts like a genie in a bottle that treats one’s wish as a command. On iPhone 4S, it uses the owner’s voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls and many others. It understands what you say, knows what you mean and even talks back. This intelligent personal assistant is indeed the turning point of AI in the avenue of mobility. SIRI Inc. was acquired by Apple in 2010 and this meant that software integration plans for Blackberry and Android phones were all cancelled.

In his recent blog, Lars Hard, founder and CEO of the the AI platform Expertmaker thinks that mobile innovation will prompt the spring of new interfaces and capabilities: “It doesn’t stop there. There will be a massive change to the structure of the Internet as people depend more upon smart virtual assistants to manage much of their online presence. The focus is shifting from simple delivery of unstructured data –texts, sound files, images, videos, forum posts and short messages, etc. –to a more comprehensive data analysis and a complimentary set of advanced functions.”

His views depict how data is entirely overwhelming and AI might allow us to mimic our own minds when sifting through data by adapting to our preferences and filtering it to our expectations. He then concluded, “Therefore, development innovation will primarily focus on various approaches to the smart extraction of usable information in unstructured data –and AI will play a central role in teaching our machines how to understand the data they are processing in a deeper, more meaningful way.”

Following the launch of its relative SIRI, Trapit introduced an AI platform that serves as a search assistant. It entered the market via its public beta platform and work around personalizing web search tool powered by a sophisticated technology. It boasts 100k clean sources to search in real-time, readily updating your results. Search giant, Google is also taking a big step in utilizing AI to fuel the engine of “Project Glass.” Not only this undertaking involves augmented reality search, the company has dropped hints that it could actually shake-up the landscape of mobile computing.

AI vs Human

I’d still say that between the battle of AI and humankind, we are winning. Although literally three Harvard folks succumbed to Watson, logical thinking is arguably the easiest to program in computers. But the true challenge that I am seeing right now for AI is its ability to process visual information and incorporate it with morality or feelings. Computers are still miles away from getting anywhere near how astonishing the human brain is interpreting visual images. To add, there has no robot in existence or has been created that passed the “Turing Test” and be taken as human. But, AI expert Marcus du Sautoy thinks that the chase for AI is moving in a more aggressive pacing and a different course. It is evolving before the very eyes of humanity.

Alan Turing, the perpetrator of the above-mentioned human validation exam was believed to be the catalyst of modern expeditions towards AI. His expositions regarding creating an artificially contraption that can think like he did started at a tender age of 10 with a book he read that says:

“Of course the body is a machine. It is vastly complex, many times more complicated than any machine ever made with hands; but still after all a machine. It has been likened to a steam machine. But that was before we knew as much about the way it works as we know now. It really is a gas engine; like the engine of an automobile, a motor boat or a flying machine.”

As an evidence to the improvements being supported by several tech groups, University of Massachusetts Amherst computer scientist Hava Siegelmann received funding to spearhead the development of the first “Super-Turing” computer.

The humanization of tech has brought us to the period where designs and models of devices are human-centric and smarter solutions, which all revolves around developments in artificial intelligence. With all the movies I have watched from the past on how these robots that can think and feel as if they are real people scare the whatever out of me. At one point, I believe the AI goal is absurd. Maybe, I placed the AI thinking in a box created by what I have seen in flicks. I really find SIRI and Watson cool because they are not housed in embodiments of human beings. And perhaps, the big-eyed robot shaking my hands is audacious and hard to grasp.