60 Second Adventures in Artificial Intelligence.
Chapter 1,
How does A.I. Work?
Artificial intelligence is about 'computers that can learn complex tasks' not about people
pretending they’re smart.
In fact, A.I. systems work by mimicking the way that neurons are connected in our own
brains, creating 'Artificial Neurons', that are not individually that smart, but that
work together in huge networks to perform complicated tasks.
Like humans, artificial intelligence needs training before it can recognise things.
Humans learn quickly... most of the time.
But A.I.s can process many more images, much faster - and all without getting bored.
In this way Astronomers use A.I. to scan their data, recognising stars, galaxies and black
holes with superhuman speed
And, while they can't yet replace a scientist’s intuition, trained A.I.s can save a lot of
time, so the scientists can concentrate on other things.
And that really is intelligent.
60 Second Adventures in Artificial Intelligence.
Chapter 2,
A.I. versus A.I.
Before A.I.s can do useful things,
such as recognise what book is missing from a shelf,
like humans,
they need to be taught by example how to identify what to look for...
Luckily A.I.s are intelligent enough to teach each other,
for example by playing themselves at thousands of games of 'Go'
or chess or learning music or cookery by trial and error.
When a human follows instructions, missing data can lead to guesswork,
which isn't always a success.
A.I.s on the other hand create their own learning materials!
Imagine the A.I. on the right is trying to recognise real galaxies,
while the other creates realistic-looking fake galaxies based on real data.
As the A.I. learns what isn't convincing,
it keeps improving,
until it's good enough to fool other computers and teach them what to look for...
When your artificial data is detailed and indistinguishable from the real thing
the whole training process is a real recipe for success!
60 Second Adventures in Artificial Intelligence.
Chapter 3,
Humans teaching A.I.
Though they've got ‘intelligence’ in their name,
A.I.s are born stupid and learn slowly.
A.I.s need to be shown masses of example data,
while humans can learn their skills from just a few examples.
But, once they've finished learning,
A.I.s can be impressive.
Recognising a cat would be relatively easy for an A.I.
The internet has millions of cat pictures because people just love cats...
But when A.I.s look at something rarer like a Green Pea galaxy,
the data just isn’t available,
which is where Citizen Scientists come to the rescue....
Because humans are good at identifying unfamiliar things,
thousands of volunteers and researchers can look through data online and label items that
the A.I. doesn't recognise.
And, once the A.I. has the correct data,
it can get on with its work...
until the next time it needs some help!
60 Second Adventures in Artificial Intelligence.
Chapter 4,
An eye for an A.I.
Unlike a camera, which sees things in two dimensions,
humans construct a 3D representation of the world
by cleverly interpreting what the eye sees.
Our 3D construct of what a real cat looks like means we can recognise a cat
even though they don't look identical every time we see them.
So, when you want to use an A.I. for complicated image recognition,
it helps for it to 'look' like humans
in other words, look 'in the same way that humans do',
by Generating 3D representations.
In order to recognise a human (for example),
special A.I.s called Convolutional Neural Networks or CNNs
- nothing to do with the news -
combine together the outputs of many simple shape detectors
and by combining these combinations over and over again,
build an accurate representation of the world.
So even subtle and rare astronomical details can be spotted
without a human scientist leaving them free for more important matters.
To find out more about how AI is helping scientists understand the Universe, visit
projectescape.eu/ai
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