What is AI?
AI is short for Artificial Intelligence. It refers to a machine with the capability to learn, reason, and “think” like a human. AI can be used in specific use cases, like navigation or facial recognition. Or it can also be utilized more broadly, like how a modern chat bot can answer many questions and handle a wide variety of tasks. See our other post, “Understanding Artificial Intelligence, its Impact and Potential” for a deeper dive on its definition.
Let’s explore some of the original uses of AI, and some places you might be encountering AI in everyday life.
what was the first use of ai?
For as long as computers have existed (and even before), people have wondered if we could get a machine to think and learn like a human brain. Some of the first examples putting this into practice go back to the 1950s, with the creation of the first chess-playing programs that were operating autonomously but in a limited capacity. By 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue was able to beat a chess world champion!
The first precursors to modern chatbots were created in the mid 1960s. The first fully autonomous industrial robot was in use in 1961. In 1979, the “Stanford Cart” was one of the first robots to autonomously move itself across a room full of obstacles. The first attempts at self-driving cars came in the late 80s and early 90s.
Let’s fast forward to modern-day and see where AI shows up in our daily lives.
Where do I encounter ai in regular life?
GPS navigation
Global Positioning Systems (GPSes) began utilizing AI technology around 2017 with the ability to utilize live user data to update traffic patterns. Without AI involved, navigation systems wouldn’t be able to adapt to live, ongoing traffic conditions or quickly reroute. AI also suggests routes while taking your previous driving patterns into account (whether preferred routes, or estimated arrival based on typical driving speed).
things that can navigate by themselves
Anything that can navigate itself around objects and obstacles is probably utilizing AI technology. The ability to process input from a camera or other sensors, determine which objects are close and which are far away, and reason what is the best path to take, all need the “thinking power” of AI to accomplish.
Self-navigating robots
Robot vacuums, like the Roomba, and their newer cousins, robot lawn mowers, fall into this category. Some grocery store chains have self-navigating robots to help clean messes, and these also use AI to navigate safely.
self-driving cars
Any car with any type of self-driving is utilizing AI to do so. Some cars have a “self park” feature, where a car can parallel park without human intervention. Certain cars have a self-driving feature where it will take over maintaining highway speeds, keeping distance between the cars in front of it. They can even change lanes when necessary. Some companies, like Waymo, offer totally autonomous, driverless taxi experiences for passengers in certain cities.
Virtual Assistants or chat bots
The ones embedded in your devices
Siri (Apple), Alexa (Amazon), Copilot (Microsoft), or Gemini (Google) are always ready on our phones, tablets, and laptops to answer questions and set timers for us. Their capabilities, and the amount of apps and functions they interact with, have expanded greatly in the last decade.
The act of “listening” and interpreting what we speak into instructions and questions (and then following up with actions and answers) has nearly always been AI.
The “agents” helping on websites
Many companies are finding that a number of repeatable questions can be answered by AI chatbots. These are trained on the company’s data. Many online support chats are answered by AI first. Humans monitor for difficulty or take over when something requires special permissions (like issuing a refund).
Modern Chat-based Ai products
ChatGPT, Claude, and other chat-based products are clearly advertised as AI. These newer products are in the class of “generative AI”. They go beyond answering questions about existing data. They can generate new data (images, audio, text, code) based on what it knows.
Face recognition
Facial recognition software has been around for many decades, and has used a specific type of Artificial Intelligence called Neural Networks. Unlocking your phone by looking at the camera is just one application of facial recognition.
You may have noticed your cloud photo storage (like Apple Photos or Google Photos) can recognize faces. It can create albums with pictures of a particular person. You can even choose settings to “share every picture of PersonA with PersonB”. This can be a great feature for families wanting to automatically share pictures of their children among a certain trusted group of people).
in your email and texts
filtering messages
The logic that detects which messages are spam and which are ones you should see has increasingly been handled by AI algorithms. AI can take many things into account, including your patterns around what you label as junk, the perceived tone of the emails or texts coming in, and more.
Filtering doesn’t just apply to spam, though. Increasingly, email providers will auto-label certain messages as being “promotional” or related to social media. These filtering decisions can have AI behind them.
Suggested text and actions
Artificial intelligence is working when your phone keyboard suggests the next word, an email suggests how to complete a phrase. Its working when either email or text messages suggests the next full response. Even beyond suggesting the next words, AI will read what your texts and emails say. It will notice when a date is mentioned, and suggest reminders or calendar events that correspond with the date and context it reads.
social media
Algorithms
Any place where you have a “feed” of content, like Facebook, TikTok, or even LinkedIn, a complex algorithm is deciding what you should be shown next. This process can take an astounding number of factors into account. These factors include what is known about your demographic, where you are located, what types of content you interact with (or even just hesitate over). It may know what other sites you visit. It knows who are you directly and indirectly connected to on the platform, what your connections interact with on the platform, and so much more. This decision engine is backed by Artificial Intelligence.
captions or ai voices
Captions are often helpful to show on social media videos. Many times, the creation of these captions are created, at least initially, by AI. It takes the spoken audio and produces written captions that are spaced along a video when those words are spoken.
There are also videos narrated with AI generated voices. In this case AI can “speak” written text with a distinct voice, appropriate pauses, inflection, and tone changes.
search engines
Search Engines (like Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, Ecosia, etc.) take a search term provided by a user and return what they think are the best, most relevant search results. Deciding what to return is a complex decision process. The software not only has to comb the entirety of all internet pages, but it has to understand the context and intent of the search term. This process has used Artificial Intelligence as far back as the 1990s.
With the advancements in Generative AI, search engines are now including “AI Overview” answers. Not only will you see the relevant links to websites that might answer the question, but AI attempts to provide its own summary of the answer. These can be a great starting point, but can easily contain false data, so should be verified by another source.
photo editing
There is a lot of AI generated content lately. But even before AI could generate new images, the technology has been used for photo-editing functions. For example, “background knockout” or software that can detect what the focus of the picture is and delete the rest, needs AI to function as well as it does.
AI can also manipulate photos in impressive ways. You can circle an area of a photo and AI will try to remove an object from the photo and fill in the background in its place. AI can also extend a photo – if you want it to be taller, AI can predict what an extended version of the photo would look like and create imagery where there was none before.
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence has accelerated in its capabilities, especially in the recent decades. However, the origins of the technology and research are well over 75 years old. Even though it might not be obvious, AI has been behind a lot of our most-used tool for decades, and we continue to interact with AI regularly.
If you have any further questions about Artificial Intelligence, or any other tech topic, just call, email, or use our contact form to send us a message, and we’ll be happy to assist you. Thank you!
