Artificial intelligence applications are extremely wide-ranging and run from personalised medicine and managing an epidemic such as Covid-19 to solutions for cutting energy costs or streamlining water resource management. This is because they can generate consistent conclusions by tapping a wide variety of data sources, as was showcased today at the AI & Big Data Congress held in Barcelona.
Artificial intelligence now has the ability to “answer three levels of questions in prediction, the effect of actions and intervention, and the third, explanation,” argued Judea Pearl, director of Cognitive Systems at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and one of the pioneering scientists in AI research.
Causal relationships “have always been a hindrance for humans and machines alike because of the uncertainty in decision-making due to the inability to process all the existing information and noise,” he added. However, now we have a language “which can infer the conclusion in a meaningful way if we input our knowledge about the world.”
“Artificial intelligence is already part of our lives and its impact is on the rise,” pointed out Therese Jamaa, vice-president of Huawei Spain and the Spanish Red Cross Foundation, who noted that these “technologies are able to simulate characteristic components of human behaviour and can now learn automatically.” As such, “this type of intelligence is yielding huge breakthroughs in sectors such as education, healthcare and environmental protection.”
“Many industries can reap the benefits of AI, albeit always with the principle of responsibility in mind, by unpacking the advantages and limitations of using AI in each case,” she suggested. “If all industries grasp this principle and shoulder their own responsibilities, AI will continue to thrive.”
