AI and Robotics: Research Questions Prior To The Lecture Of Gianni Di Caro
1. How do you define AI?
AI is a technology that works on enabling computers and machines to comprehend information, reason, learn, and make decisions to achieve objectives. They draw on data to guide their predictions/responses, and they also update their prediction mechanism by receiving feedback on how successful they were in their predictions.
McCarthy, J. (2007, November 12). Basic questions. Stanford University. https://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai/node1.html www-formal.stanford.edu
Stryker, C., & Kavlakoglu, E. (2026, October 2). What is artificial intelligence (AI)? IBM. https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/artificial-intelligence
2. Can you name at least three different sub-fields of AI?
I will briefly explain Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Natural Language Processing.
Machine Learning creates models that create or update models, based on the data provided them, to make accurate inferences in new conditions. For example, in a method used in machine learning, supervised learning, the data and correct answers are given, and the machine learning system works to capture underlying rules to make accurate predictions.
Computer Vision systems use machine learning to analyze and interpret pixels in visual content, usually with the aim of classifying them into categories or identifying objects within them. Lastly, Natural Language Processing also uses machine learning to enable computers to comprehend and use human language. It allows AI systems to understand written requests by humans (prompts), and it develops a technology called large language models, which uses neural networks to predict (to create) and understand a sequence of words in a given context.
Bergmann, D. (2026, October 2). What is machine learning? IBM. https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/machine-learning IBM
Caballar, R. D., & Stryker, C. (2025, September 17). What is computer vision? IBM. https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/computer-vision IBM
Google. (2026, January 27). What is machine learning? Google for Developers. https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/intro-to-ml/what-is-ml developers.google.com
Stryker, C., & Holdsworth, J. (2024, August 11). What is NLP (natural language processing)? IBM. https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/natural-language-processing
3. AI has been around for about 70 years so far. Why is it booming right now?
It is booming right now because much more data is available for training. Also, developments in computer hardware affected this boom. Incorporation of more transistors and arithmetic units in GPUs allowed more parallel processing, and in 2017, NVIDIA developed circuits dedicated for matrix multiplication and addition. These improvements in hardware made training AI models faster and allowed them to process greater amounts of requests per second.
NVIDIA. (2023, February 1). GPU performance background user’s guide. https://docs.nvidia.com/deeplearning/performance/dl-performance-gpu-background/