AI for Social Good

2AI Explained: A Non-Technical Guide

“Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculptor of his own brain.”

– Santiago Ramón y Cajal

“Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.”

– Oliver Sacks

IN THIS CHAPTER, we will explore the lexicon that has developed around AI—the shared language that has grown out of its history, and the vagaries of its practitioners. The cant employed by specialists may seem mysterious; however, by drawing parallels to universally shared experiences, we can make the mysteries of the field more accessible.

Definition of AI

Let's start with a type of artificial intelligence called expert systems. We will not be addressing this type of AI in much detail because it is not at the center of the current resurgence. Expert systems in AI had its heyday during the AI winter of the 1970s and were the major focus of development in the subsequent decades. The researchers and engineers building these systems believed they could encapsulate the decision-making processes of an expert in the field. It seemed reasonable to expect that if an expert could explain how they reached a decision step by step, that process could be encoded in a computer program. Assuming experts made their decisions logically, then logical rules, commonly in the basic format of if…then, could reasonably be expected to replicate an expert. A bank loan officer, for example, could say they looked at an ...