All about artificial intelligence

What exactly is AI?

Today, artificial intelligence is becoming more and more prevalent. But first you have to understand what it is. To keep it short and simple, an AI is a computer program capable of processing large amounts of data, reasoning or even discerning patterns that humans cannot detect.

An AI can be purely reactive; this is stage 1. In that case, it has no memory, no experience, it is simply able to perceive the world at a given moment.

In stage 2, the AI will have a limited memory, i.e., retain information and know how to experience the past. In short, a Level 2 AI already does a lot of things.

At NOVO SENSO, our mission is to develop AI that helps rather than replaces people who care for animals. To succeed in this mission, it is important to understand what artificial intelligence is.

AI indeed has many facets, and image recognition, also known as “labeling,” is an important stage in the learning process of artificial intelligence.

So what does this image recognition consist of?

Labeling is a collection of image detection and analysis methods to automate a specific task. It is a computer vision technology capable of identifying places, people, objects and many other types of elements in an image and drawing conclusions by analyzing them.

Photo or video recognition can be performed with varying degrees of accuracy, depending on the type of information or concept being sought. This is because a model or algorithm is able to detect a specific element, just as it can easily assign an image to a major category. To automate a specific task, the algorithm must be trained, and this is a huge task. However, building a labeled dataset for learning the algorithm is an essential step in these “computer vision” projects.

If we take object detection algorithms, training the algorithm from scratch requires millions of images to achieve accurate results, but already trained algorithms can be tuned for a specific task using a relatively smaller set of images. This process of retraining and tuning an algorithm is called transfer learning.

But even with transfer learning, a significant amount of human labor is required to get them going. On average, it takes at least 1,500 and 2,000 labeled images to automate this particular task. A long and time-consuming mission, but nevertheless necessary for a well-functioning algorithm!

Image recognition, however, is only one of the many tasks of artificial intelligence. This AI term is used to denote any time a computer performs a task that mimics human intelligence. We have seen the identification and location of an object in a video, but there are others, which are also possible:

  • Translating text or speech from a foreign language (natural language processing).
  • Determining whether you are getting a healthy amount of sleep and exercise (activity recognition).

As you can see, the world of artificial intelligence is very large and varied, but we hope that with this article you have a little better understanding of what lies behind the term “artificial intelligence.”