- In 1950, Professor Alan Turing created a test
for computers called the Imitation Game.
The basic setup was that a computer would engage
in a text conversation with a human evaluator.
The person would type something
and the computer would respond.
The computer would win the game if the human evaluator
couldn't tell whether they were talking
to a person or a computer.
The Turing test was one of the first attempts
to measure artificial intelligence
or the ability of computers to perform tasks
that normally require human intelligence.
Today, we interact with intelligent computers all the time.
When I take picture on my phone,
there's an app that recognizes people's faces.
My bank uses software to watch for fraudulent charges.
And when I shop online, many websites have chat-bots
that can answer basic questions.
Intelligence is a hard thing to describe and to quantify,
but for practical purposes, I think we can say
that intelligence has to do with analyzing information,
making decisions and taking actions.
Of course, intelligence is something that comes naturally
for humans, but for computers to be able to make decisions
and to take actions using AI, they need to have instructions
or programs that tell them what to do.
Some AI tools just look for patterns and exceptions.
For example, my bank's computer might look for charges
to my credit that occurred from a different zip code
and flag those as suspicious,
but there are more advanced versions of AI
where computers can learn how to solve problems
on their own.
This is called machine learning.
Machine learning generally starts out by giving a computer
a set of rules to follow.
But some of these rules are flexible
and can be changed by the computer.
Then you train the computer
by giving it a bunch of sample data
and providing feedback about the results.
The computer uses this feedback to adjust its analysis
and decision making and to change the rules.
In other words, it learns and gets better
through feedback and practice.
These days, you can see machine learning in lots of places.
I frequently use apps that have voice recognition
and facial recognition.
They all use machine learning and they rely on feedback
to get better over time.
In the supply chain world, there are companies using AI
and ML to schedule production runs, order inventory,
track shipments and much more.
As these technologies get better,
they'll take over many tasks
that are being done by humans today.
We can be sure that artificial intelligence
and machine learning are going to play an important role
in our future.
Understanding how AI works can help us make the best use
of both the computers and the humans in our supply chain.