Artificial Intelligence: What exactly is it and does it contain any E numbers?

Hello hello!  So, after 4 years of my personal blog, and 50,000 followers later, I been asked by quite a few of you (thanks Mum!), to share my thoughts on the wonderful world of Analytics that I’ve been living in for the last 25 years, with a focus on where the industry is going, and explaining in ‘Min Language’ all those techie phases that you might may have heard in that last meeting you had with the data scientist you’ve just hired (as that’s what your competitors did), or you overheard the topic being discussed by the youngsters on the H12 to Harrow on your way home when they weren’t on Snapchat.

Let’s tick them off: AI, EI, Machine Learning, Neural Nets, NLP, NLG, RPA, VR, AR, MFI, that kind of thing. Ok, I made the last one up, but you get the gist. “EI”…didn’t get that one? That’s Emotional Intelligence. More about that later…

I believe we are entering the most exciting times of mankind right now, as we finally are at a stage where the stars have aligned around us having the necessary raw computing power, access to large amounts of storage in the shape of that fluffy cloud and finally access to data.   

I thought I’d kick off a topic that Hollywood and Bollywood has been bringing to our screens since the invention of the silver screen. That topic is ‘Robots: Friend or Foe’. I’m sure you will all have a view as if you are in the Terminator camp (the first one when he was a bit naughty) or iRobot where our silver friendly humanoid was on the side of Will Smith. There is a great debate by leaders such as Bill Gates, Elon Musk (my hero!) and Steven Hawking who say we need to be really careful that the current AI path we are on could lead to the biggest risk, that we face as a civilisation,  where Skynet is a reality and we are ruled by computers. Yes folks, a bigger risk for mankind than the effect on our brains of us all secretly watching that last season of Love Island, though we would never really admit it to our friends.   As homework for this blog, I watched a BBC programme that was on last week called Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots.

It was a fascinating watch to see how over the last 100 years the robots have got much more intelligent, having taken over many of the tasks we used to do like making cars, walking up steps, and playing the piano…For me, I was most interested in how through the use of Artificial Intelligence, robots have started to learn all by themselves, by using previous conversations and continuous feedback to improve, whereby they know the difference between a tea cup and an orange. (hint, you can’t dunk your biscuit in the latter).

So what do we actually mean by the phrase Artificial Intelligence, and is that different to Machine Learning and what about Deep Learning? How deep is deep? Well, I’m glad you’ve asked.  

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science that aims to create intelligent machines that work and react like humans. For example, the computer has certain traits such as Knowledge, Reasoning, Problem Solving, Perception, Learning and Planning. All the lovely things we do without really thinking about, like that time when the driver of the Met Line tells you the tube is now terminating at Wembley Park as he’s going on strike and you now have to work out how to get to Moorgate!

So a subset of AI is Machine Learning. (It’s not something to use interchangeably, unless you want the geeks at the next Hackathon you attend to roll their eyes at you). In essence, Machine Learning is a technique where the machine is ‘trained’ using large amounts of data and algorithms that gives it the ability to learn how to perform the task. They do this by detecting patterns in existing data, identify similar patterns in future data and then make data driven predictions. Still don’t know what I’m talking about? Let’s try bringing it to life. The next time you are on Google and you misspell a word (very likely these days thanks to reliance on autocorrect), and you type ‘Ficebook’ as it’s lunchtime and so that’s fine as you are covered under Human Rights legislation. The machine learning algorithm, will suggest that you probably meant ‘Facebook’. It even works if you type ‘FB’. Smart huh.

Ready for another example? This time let’s have a look at one of my favourite sites that I love to show to our clients when they come and visit our lab, here at Concentra (www.concentra.co.uk).

https://www.captionbot.ai/  Here, it’s using some more powers within the AI family, specifically computer vision and natural language to describe what’s in a picture. Now for humans, that’s easy peasy, but up until now, really hard for a computer to do. The website uses an image library from all the pictures stored on Bing as it’s frame of reference as well as a super smart emotion algorithm to describe if a human in a picture is laughing because they are still remembering that MFI joke.  The site has some sample photos like the one below, and what’s really impressive is that by using these natural language generation techniques, it stiches a sentence together like a human would by understanding the different objects in the picture to work out what the context could be.  What’s great is that the system is continually getting better by the users giving  a ‘how did I do’ score.  I remember last year,  I tried testing the system with a picture of Donald Trump (before he was President), and at the time it thought it was Louis van Gaal, the Ex Man United football manager. So I gave the machine one star and no dinner and now as you can see below, it’s much more accurate…

Woah, I’ve just realised that I’ve written quite a bit already today on this super topic and as it’s probably time for you to get off the tube now, or go to that meeting, why don’t we leave it there, and we can pick up again next week to continue this topic.

Please let me know if there are any other topics that you would like me to demystify like ‘Are we really living in the matrix’, or ‘Will my kids need to bother how to drive’ or ‘Is your name really Min or is that some kind of geeky statistical inside joke’…that kind of thing.

Right, let’s leave it there, and I wish you a lovely sleep,

A small man called Min

Got anything new to report? Min's MinIT update. Sunday 2nd July 2017

Well hello hello! Yes, I know it's been ages since my last blog, but I've been meditating...

As many of you know, I had a month off before starting my new job in the City. I had a long list of 'bucket list' activities. Things like finishing Grand Theft Auto 5, waking up when the time is double digits, and do some of the chores that I've been promising Mrs Min for the last 23 years...

The month came and went, and let's say I ticked off a third of the bucket list (yep the middle one), though now on 39% rather than 35% of GTA!

The good news is that my new commute will still be on the Met line! To be honest, when I was looking at which company to take my analytics and comedy powers to, I asked the computer to only select potential employers within a 5 minute walk of Met Line stations. 

The algorithms ran for 2 nights straight, and it used the contents of my previous blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and the "Forbes list of companies to work for before your 49th Birthday", and decided that I should work for a company called Concentra, that had created some awesome software products, had a super smart analytics team and a family feel to the organisation. The algorithm noticed that I always run out of time to finish my blogs, so having the 2 extra stops to Moorgate meant I wouldn't have to finish mid joke. The added benefit also being that my chances of getting a seat on the way back had increased by 14.78%.

So now we are all up to date, let's take a look at:

Advert of the Week:

Wowza, these guys are good. Every Body...everybody, see what they did there. Bet that took months to come up with...

TV show of the Week

I watched that Metropolitan Police programme a couple of days ago (available on iplayer) and learnt a lot about our awesome city.  There was this man who had been arrested because he had stolen a car. The yoof tried to get out of it by saying that he needed it to get to work, to which the policeman said, 'why didn't you take the bus?' to which he replied....'I don't have a driving licence to drive a bus'...boom!  Missed me huh...

Gadgets Review

And onto the main part of the show! So a couple of weeks ago I received an email from the British Gas Hive people saying that they had read the blog and knew that I had hooked up their Hive system with the heating system and lights. They had just invented a new product, and because of my blog and 50,000 followers, wanted me to send me their latest product, the Leak Sensor.  And before you ask, it's not because I'm turning 50 next year, and the bladder isn't what it used to be, but something to alert you when your house is about to turn into a swimming pool. I thought long and hard about if I had the time to do this, noticed it was free (Indian innit), and they should send it immediately!

The box arrived a couple of days later and I watched the video of how to install the sensor which was nice and easy. In essence, you just clip it onto your stop gap tap, and it shows you where that may be in your house. And before you ask, it's not something you have between meals, but rather likely to be in your kitchen.  You then connect it to your wifi, and use the HIVE app to install the device. Simples and another thing that the FBI can now monitor for me from the Pentagon. 

That reminds me, as part of my month off, I spent rather a lot of time watching Netflix and getting some value out of my neighbours £7.49 subscription. (Password was Cricket...who would have thought it!).  Rajvi told me about this series called 'Person of Interest' and I was totally hooked. All about how this man with glasses who had invented a computer program that would predict a crime before it happened, a bit like that Minority Report movie, but with someone taller than Tom Cruise. It tapped into all the electronic sources of data like CCTV, mobile phones, Google and what your aunty at the local community centre was talking about. The catch was that it didn't know if the person it identified was the person doing the crime, or having it done to them. I thought if only they had this leak sensor data, maybe that would have made the difference.... Anyways, there are 5 series, each had around 24 episodes so that's going to keep you out of mischief on the Met line for quite a while. 

The Sensor is super duper and I get alerts like this now:

Min marks out of 10. 8.97656. Get it if you have a HIVE and whilst it's still free, because as you know, there's no point crying over spilt water...

Gadget Review 2: 

As it's been ages since my last blog, I've amassed quite a few gadgets, so let's do one more. Picture the scene, it's night time, everyone is asleep, and you need to go to the loo as you've just turned 43 and well, that's the way it is. The only thing is that you don't really want to turn on the toilet light on as that wakes everyone up as it also makes the extractor fan thing turn on and make a noise for the next 3.5 mins, so what to do? (Did you do that last bit in an Indian accent and wobble your head a bit?  Err racist...)

Well I have just the solution for you my dear blog reader! It's a little device that you just place on your toilet bowl and it has a motion detection sensor. I was going to do a motion detection / bowel joke just now, but some of you may be having your breakfast or dinner whilst reading this, so I won't do the plip plop joke right now...

The device is super awesome, just requires 3 AA batteries, and you can select which is your colour preference, or if you fancy having a disco every time you do a number 2, then it just cycles through all the colours known to man. People who may pass the bathroom as this is happening may wonder if it's something out of 'Encounters of the Third Kind' or something, but I guess that serves you right for having that kebab on the way home...

Delivery was super quick from the boat from China and it's for the grand price of £2.50! Bargain or what!  Min Marks out of 10.  9.876873

Finally, thank you all for your lovely well wishes, and likes on FB and Linkedin and promise not to leave it so long for the next blog!

Have a great sleep and keep smiling!

A small man called Min.