The term “AI (artificial intelligence)” does not have a common definition, but it is mainly regarded as a “computer system with functions that imitate human intelligence.” Its functions are, specifically, classification, regression, inference, etc. AI uses these intelligent functions to perform some processing on the input information and then output the results.
Computer systems that are not AI, such as IT and information systems that perform simple numerical calculations and data processing, can only perform certain processing on the input information, but AI classifies based on learning data. It can be said that it is a technology designed to infer.
The majority of current Artificial Intelligence development technologies are not universal computers that replace humans but are specialized for a single function. Some services that utilize AI perform complicated processing, but basically, they are configured by combining independent AI functions.
AI Type
There are various technologies in AI, and the most common ones are “machine learning” and “deep learning”.
Machine learning is one of the technological areas called AI, and is a technology that uses a large amount of data to make a computer learn and increase its accuracy. The learning methods include “supervised learning,” “unsupervised learning,” and “reinforcement learning,” and the method used depends on the purpose. In a word, machine learning includes various technologies and algorithms such as logistic regression, k-means method, and support vector machine.
On the other hand, deep learning is one of the machine learning technologies, which aims to deepen learning by the computer itself without adjustment or judgment by humans by using a network that refers to the structure of neurons in the human brain. Convolution neural networks (CNN), which are often used in image recognition, and recurrent neural networks (RNN), which are often used in predicting time series data, are typical algorithms for deep learning.
AI And Big Data
“Big data” is a word that is often spoken with AI. Big data is not just a large amount of data, but is defined as data that satisfies the three elements of volume, velocity, and diversity. With the progress of AI technology such as machine learning and deep learning, the possibility of utilizing big data is being opened up.
Big data includes, for example, postings on SNS, weather data, and behavior data recorded on smart phones. Of course, it has been possible to output useful prediction results from these data, but by utilizing machine learning and deep learning, we can extract characteristic patterns hidden in the data and realize unprecedented awareness. It is becoming possible to make predictions that will be gained.
AI is not a versatile tool that can solve all business problems, but as reported in many cases, it can be used to further improve work efficiency, improve business results, and discover new business knowledge, and so on. It is a technology that can be expected to obtain great benefits.
On the other hand, in-house development requires a lot of specialized knowledge and human resources, and the hurdles are actually high, so it is the mainstream to proceed with projects with AI vendors who are good at development. When considering the introduction of AI, it is highly recommended to set up a consultation opportunity with an AI vendor like ours as the first step of the project.