Research 6: Robotics and AI

How would you define Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
In my mind, AI refers to computer systems and models that can perform difficult and complex tasks which one would imagine only humans could perform.
AI has existed for nearly 70 years. Why is it experiencing an impressive growth right now?
In recent years, there has been a sudden boom in the amount of data that is available for training/testing. Computing power has also increased exponentially, contributing to this sudden impressive growth. Also, the number of open source initiatives relating to AI have increased in recent years.
Can you identify three domains or classes of problems where current AI models still face significant challenges?
AI algorithms still face problems when it comes to understanding different human emotions, especially when it comes to sarcasm, ambiguous language and sentiment analysis in general. Also, AI models fail to apply common sense in different contexts. Humans in similar situations would traverse these issues with ease. A third problem is that even though AI is very effective and efficient in some domains and industries, such models have trouble transferring the same skills to unfamiliar contexts.
Can you name at least three application sectors where robots are widely used, and explain why they are employed in those sectors?
Manufacturing: increase efficiency, accuracy and standards of production.
Healthcare: assisting with surgeries and monitoring of patients. Reduces the need for human healthcare workers being on duty 24/7.
Logistics/Warehousing: helping out with sorting and organisation of large warehouses. Ronots make the process faster, more streamlined and reduce the chance of any errors.
Do you believe that the convergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and fully autonomous robotics is imminent and could potentially have a major impact on the world?
It is something which will definitely happen within the next few years. The convergence of AGI with our other daily processes will effect our lifestyles and the way humans approach problems.