Back in 1950, Alan Turing published his seminal paper -
- in which he focused on a machine’s ability to have human-level intelligence. In that direction, he proposed a test that we nowadays know as the Turing Test.
5 years later, Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Herbert Simon wrote the first AI program in 1955 at Carnegie Tech University. They called it the Logic Theorist, and it could solve algebraic equations and prove mathematical theorems. Mind-blowing at the time! The Dartmouth Conference, back in 1956, started a whole new academic field when the subject of Artificial Intelligence was first proposed by American Computer scientist John McCarthy. And from there onwards, AI has never stopped evolving.
In less than 10 years after the Dartmouth conference, the world’s first Artificial Intelligence chatbot was created. It was called Eliza, and its creator, Joseph Weizenbaum, designed it between 1964 and 1966, with the purpose of creating the first bridge for communication between humans and machines.
We have mentioned more than one AI personal assistant already, like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, or Microsoft Cortana, which can be embedded into various devices such as smart speakers or smartphones. But there are also chatbots that do not have a voice feature and work on a similar technology like the assistants - think of ChatGPT, for example.
All of these are powered by natural language processing (NLP) innovations. NLP is used to parse the user's speech or text and convert it into data that can be used by the AI assistant. The universal method for performing this involves breaking down audio or text files into standalone words, which are then examined by an algorithm that learns how those words relate to each other in context.
The system learns through technologies like Machine Learning and Deep Learning, which work together based on past interactions and adjust accordingly when new ones come along. For example, having both Alexa and Google Assistant in your house. Calling Alexa won’t wake up Google Assistant, even though they work almost the same. And do not worry, you can try different personal assistants at the same time, they will not get jealous!
Yes, these virtual assistants can be a blessing! They are a useful tool for anyone who wants to get things done more efficiently and have a voice assistant and an AI personal assistant. They can help you with everything from setting reminders to scheduling meetings and even finding information online.
The most obvious benefit of using AI is that it saves you time by doing things like keeping track of your appointments or reminding you about them when they're coming up, so that there are no surprises (or forgotten tasks). The main drawback is that the technology isn't perfect yet. In fact, it's still pretty limited in many ways! The assistants are still prone to mistakes, especially when they deal with complicated tasks.
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