6 areas where artificial intelligence is already in use

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become one of the most discussed technological topics of this decade. The stories told in the media range from mind-boggling, science-fiction-worthy possibilities to apocalyptic visions of a world taken over by robots and the destruction of the human race. While science fiction writers indulge in speculation, AI is persistently carving out a place in ever-new industries, finding applications in offices, factories, and educational institutions. We offer a look at 6 areas where decision-capable machines are already a part of everyday life.

Online shopping

Perhaps many of us do not even realize that we already encounter AI in our daily lives. For example, when gathering information on something in internet search engines, the most relevant results are selected by an algorithm that learns from our choices. The "smarter" the algorithm and the more it is trained with queries, the more accurately it will select exactly what we need. Ideally, AI should work in such a way that it seems to us as if the search engine is reading our minds.

Machine learning solutions are also used in various video services. They learn our tastes and suggest the most relevant movies, series, or concert recordings.

AI is gradually taking over online stores as well. Until now, it was common for a retail site to remember our interest in a product and, when we returned to the page, immediately offer the same product, even if we had already bought it recently. However, more progressive stores using AI solutions are now moving a step further. Having registered that you have purchased, for example, a new phone, the next time you visit, the stores will offer accessories specifically designed for that phone, a smartwatch, and similar items, rather than another phone of the same model.

Customer service

The opportunity to encounter a "thinking robot" in everyday life also exists on various e-commerce sites, where visitors are seemingly addressed by a customer service specialist. Often, the conversation is not started by a real person, but by a chatbot that answers standard questions. A specialist only steps in if a specific topic arises and the bot is unable to find the appropriate answers. Chatbots are constantly being trained and are becoming smarter. Therefore, they are able to successfully conduct many simple conversations without human intervention. As is known, chatbots are also developed by Tilde.

Finance and banking services

Banks process thousands of money transfers every day. How can one notice in this flood whether all transactions are legal? Is someone shopping with a stolen credit card or its data? Various computerized solutions have been used for quite some time to identify suspicious payments, and now AI solutions are increasingly being involved in the analysis. This is done, for example, by MasterCard. Their artificial intelligence and deep learning (deep learning) solutions search through millions of payments for parameters characteristic of fraudulent transactions and flag them for specialists, who then analyze each such case.

Machine learning algorithms are also penetrating deeper into stock exchanges, analyzing changes in securities prices and predicting future price fluctuations. By processing huge amounts of data, machines look for similar conditions in past records and evaluate what development scenarios followed them.

Agriculture

Although most people do not associate farming and livestock breeding with modern technology, large-scale farms in wealthy countries are quite actively implementing AI solutions to produce food as efficiently as possible. For example, the company Blue River Technology has developed the See&Spray robot, which uses computer vision to monitor plantations and automatically spray weed killers.

Meanwhile, the German company PEAT has created the Plantix solution, which analyzes soil based on images and determines which nutrients are lacking in the soil.

Computer games

The entertainment industry has long awaited the opportunity to captivate people with such futuristic solutions as virtual and augmented reality and AI. Therefore, it is not hesitant to take advantage of new opportunities. The first seeds were sown by the Deep Blue supercomputer created by IBM, which in 1997 defeated the then-world champion Garry Kasparov in chess. Since then, the world has witnessed several brilliant manifestations of AI; for example, the AlphaGo program created by DeepMind defeated the legendary Go champion, Lee Sedol of Korea.

Now, AI is being integrated into computer games available to a wide range of users, and gameplay is created in real-time, depending on the circumstances, rather than sticking to a pre-written script. One such game is F.E.A.R.

Space exploration

Since its inception, space exploration has been allocated the most modern technologies, and many inventions have later found their way into household use. AI is no exception in this regard. It sifts through data obtained by the Kepler telescope to identify distant planetary systems and will be used in NASA's 2020 Mars mission. An AI-equipped rover will spend much of its time on its own, gathering information about the Red Planet and making decisions about where to go and what analyses to perform.