Assignment 6: AI Research
How would you define Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
AI is the ability of programs to do tasks that usually require human intelligence, like recognizing patterns, making decisions, or learning from data. They are systems that can "think" and "adapt" in useful ways.
AI has existed for nearly 70 years. Why is it experiencing an impressive growth right now?
The recent growth comes from three factors: massive amounts of data generated by the internet and devices, powerful GPUs and cloud computing that can train large models, and new algorithms, especially deep learning, that scale well with data.
Can you identify three domains or classes of problems where current AI models still face significant challenges?
Common sense reasoning: AI struggles with common sense logic that is trivial for people.
Explainability: Many AI models are "black boxes," so understanding why they make a decision is difficult.
Generalization: As AI heavily relies on the training data it has been trained on, it often fails to generalize beyond it.
Can you name at least three application sectors where robots are widely used, and explain why they are employed in those sectors?
Manufacturing: Robots are good at handling repetitive and precise tasks, improving speed and reducing errors.
Healthcare: Surgical robots help doctors perform surgeries and other procedures with high accuracy.
Logistics: Robots can move, sort, and deliver goods in warehouses because they can work 24/7 without fatigue.
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?
I believe it's not imminent. While today's AI is powerful, it is still narrow and often fails to generalize beyond the training data it had been taught on. Also, there are many concerns such as the safety of people that robotics faces. However, if AGI and robotics do converge, the impact would be huge and will range from breakthroughs in healthcare to space exploration.