AI, or artificial intelligence, sounds like something that still only exists in the future, but the average person already benefits from AI in their daily lives. Without even realizing it, many of us are utilizing artificial intelligence in our own homes. If you own a digital voice assistant, such as Alexa, Siri, or Cortana, you may already recognize the potential benefits that artificial intelligence offers. These digital voice assistants function and learn with natural language processing technology to be able to understand your human requests, translate it to computer language, and then provide you with the proper response and/or information you are seeking. Without artificial intelligence, you would not be able to depend on your digital voice assistants for answers, recommendations, or help with using your connected smart devices.
You may have a handful of artificial intelligence powered items in your homes in the form of these "smart devices". Smart devices are devices that can connect to other internet-powered devices and have the ability to interact with the user. A popular form of this are Nest thermostats and similar smart thermostats. These devices use artificial intelligence to learn your heating and cooling preferences and can even determine when to lower or raise the temperature of your home based on when you home or when you are away, or even based on how you prefer it to be at certain points of the day. You may also utilize artificial intelligence when using other smart systems such as smart lighting systems, smart televisions, or even smart refrigerators. If you connect these with your digital voice assistant to control these devices, you are using artificial intelligence.
If you are one of the 4.5 billion people who own a smart phone, you may benefit from artificial intelligence many times a day without realizing it. If your phone has a form of face identification to unlock your phone, such as Apple Face ID, this is powered by artificial intelligence. Another way your phone uses artificial intelligence is within the camera. Today's smart phone cameras utilize artificial intelligence to automatically detect changes in lighting and scenery and then automatically adjusting to help you take the perfect picture. Also, if you use your phone to navigate with apps like Google Maps or Waze, artificial intelligence helps by detecting traffic and weather changes, working to get you to your destination in the quickest and safest way possible. Some people don't even have to navigate in this manner, because for those who have access to self-driving cars, powered by artificial intelligence, that task is taken, literally, of their hands.
The internet is also greatly dependent on artificial intelligence. Google and other search engines, just like our digital voice assistants, rely on natural language processing to understand our internet searches for better search results, as well as determining what ads to display based on your search history and preferences. Your social media experiences are also heavily impacted by artificial intelligence in the form of recognizing your interests and determining what to show you on your news feeds and ads, but also by detecting hate words and phrases and automatically omitting them so that you don't have to report these occurrences on your own. Another way social media uses artificial intelligence is through facial recognition. When you upload a picture of a group of family or friends and you automatically get suggestions of who to tag, artificial intelligence is how this occurs. Using email also requires artificial intelligence through artificial spam blockers, spell checkers, and auto correct, which requires the use of natural language processing. Even if you only use the internet to kick back and watch tv shows, movies, or videos online with something such as Netflix or Youtube, the recommendations that you are shown are all suggested by artificial intelligence.
These are just a few examples of how the average person uses artificial intelligence in their daily lives, and it isn't even all the ways. AI can also help to find your next job, protect authors from plagiarism, convert audio to text, power video game npc's, even diagnose and detect diseases. When we look at all the ways artificial intelligence improves our daily lives, it is obvious that it is here to stay and we can't wait to see what advancements come in the near future.