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Hey Siri! Remind me to write an article
about Artificial Intelligence on Monday. “ ”
rtificial Intelligence is the next big thing in
technology. Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is the
ability for computer systems to learn how to
accomplish a task and then do that task itself
without need for human interaction. In its basic
form, AI has been in use for decades. Many are
familiar with AI in video games. With computers
getting faster and cheaper, AI is now being used
in many everyday gadgets. For instance, on your
smartphone you may have a virtual assistant
such as Siri, Google Now, or Cortana. These
assistants can help you do many things including
checking stocks, reminding you to walk the dog,
or start playing those 70’s Disco Hits you love
so much. Virtual Assistants can learn how you
speak or what you normally ask about, and can
better answer your question, or even predict
what you’re going to ask.
Another machine that is using Artificial
Intelligence is your car. For years, computers
have been in vehicles in one way or another.
As the years have progressed, cars have used
computers to control more and more of your
vehicle’s functions. This allows your car to help
with things such as lane control and traction
control. AI is also being developed for vehicles
to enable autonomous driving features. This
means that a driver could read a newspaper or
catch up on email while their car drives them
to the office. Tesla has already implemented a
basic version of this feature in their current fleet
of cars, called AutoPilot. It is very close to being
fully autonomous, but requires that the driver be
aware and available at all times in the event of
an accident or other catastrophic event. Uber’s
OTTO is also developing self-driving features, but
for use on 18-wheeler freight trucks. This would
allow a truck, with a driver, drive itself on the
highway, thus possibly making them much safer.
Decision making is another way that Artificial
Intelligence is being used. There is a wide range
of things that AI can do; some examples include
controlling characters in Video Games, music
suggestions on Pandora or Spotify, and purchase
prediction at retailers like Target. AI can also
make very big decisions such as in the case of
IBM’s Watson AI Supercomputer. IBM started
developing Watson in 2005. Watson was created
as a Supercomputer to compete on the game
show, Jeopardy. Watson competed against two
former Jeopardy contestants, Ken Jennings and
Brad Rutter, who were both the best Jeopardy
players at the time. Watson was able to compete
in two televised matches and ended up winning
both matches despite having only won 65% of
the 100 test matches it competed in before.
Watson is now being used by companies to do
recommendations or prediction services for their
customers.
Looking forward, Artificial Intelligence is moving
to become even smarter. With Natural Language
processing, AI will be able to identify speech
from humans and transfer that to commands
or for vocal response. Neural Learning for
robots will also change how they learn how to
accomplish tasks and make them more human.
This will allow things like Driver-less cars and
Artificial Assistants to exist more and more in the
future.
by Robert Hendrix, User Services
A
The 2017 Spring Higher Education Center Technology Day events were successfully held at the Malden,
Kennett, and Sikeston campuses on January 31st, Feb 1st and 2nd. The purpose of the events is to give
Regional Campus students, faculty and staff the opportunity to have hands-on technical assistance from
Information Technology User Services personnel, much like main campus users enjoy. This is the second
set of events this school year.
Todd Williams, Help Desk Supervisor traveled to each location, for events held from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Students, faculty and staff received assistance with tasks such as connecting to Wi-Fi, setting up email
on their mobile devices, optimizing computer performance, managing email, and general technology
questions. Free technology related accessories where also given away, such as phone kickstands, and
microfiber clothes. One topic of interest at each site was the recent change to student email accounts to
Office 365.
In the interest of providing greater
hands-on assistance to users at
Regional Campus locations, student lab
assistants provide office hours at each
site.
For more details regarding these events,
check the next issue of the Tech Talk,
and/or the Information Technology Event
Calendar at
.
Spring 2017
TECH DAYS
By Todd Williams
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