Why Is Artificial Intelligence Such a Big Deal?

Now that Warren Buffet is investing $165 billion in artificial intelligence stocks, or at least in companies like Apple which use AI technologies throughout their product development chain as well as featuring AI in their products, I guess we need to write at least one comment about what everybody (except me) thinks will be the future of the planet, never mind just the human race.

Thanks to Motley Fool, here’s as good a definition of AI as I can find: AI is “the use of computers to mimic human judgment.” The term was first used by the science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, in a series of sci-fi stories written beginning in 1940, which he published as a book in 1950 I, Robot, which has sold a gazillion copies since that time.

In fact, AI technologies first appeared on manufacturing assembly lines, with machines doing repetitive tasks on assembly lines which made cars and other major machinery. This type of AI is usually referred to as the use of robotics in manufacturing and related activities.

The use of AI also became a fixture for a variety of electronic tools used to validate user access to equipment and data, including all those nasty passwords we give ourselves to get into our bank accounts, our private chat rooms and our email and other communication devices.