Lesson 1: What is artificial intelligence?

In simplistic terms, artificial intelligence is technology that enables computers to perform work instead of people. From a technical perspective, AI is nothing more than the application of mathematics and statistics to solving certain types of problems and making predictions based on historical data. Powerful computers are needed to perform the computations that artificial intelligence requires.

Lesson 2: Why is artificial intelligence important?

Do you feel like artificial intelligence is everywhere? Do you hear devices verbally answering your questions? Do see artificial intelligence affecting people's jobs?

Artificial intelligence is one of the most or the most impactful technology in business today. As consumers, it is all around us. Siri, OK Google, Alexa, and Cortana all have AI capabilities. In business, AI is being used to increase productivity within the organization. In many situations, this means computer systems will be doing the work instead of people.

Lesson 3: How is artificial intelligence being used today?

While there are many promising uses of artificial intelligence, here are a few that are realities today: Self-driving cars, fraud detection, purchase prediction, online customer support. AI requires lots of data to be effective. Computer applications that inherently generate or have access to large pools of data (big data) fare the best. In situations where the amount of data is limited, AI can still be effective, however, the accuracy of its predictions will be somewhat lower than applications in which plenty of data is available.

Lesson 4: Am I already using artificial intelligence? (incorrect, should be) How will jobs be affected?

Almost everyone is using artificial intelligence today. For example, our smartphones can translate spoken words into text using an AI technology known as natural language processing. Other situations include purchase recommendations from Amazon.com, Pandora Radio, and Netflix. If you've ever had you bank call you about a suspicious credit card transaction, there's a good chance that call was triggered by an AI-powered computer system.

Lesson 5: Summary / What's Next

In Lesson 1, we reviewed what artificial intelligence is. In short, it's basically having machines to do the work of human beings. In Lesson 2, we discussed why artificial intelligence is important. It's important at three levels:

Personal / Individual level

Business level

Technology & Society

In Lesson 3 we reviewed how artificial intelligence is being used today. Use cases range from autonomous vehicles to chatbots to recommendation engines. In Lesson 4, we discussed how to prepare for the era of AI. There will be primary and secondary roles, some of which do not exist today.

In Lesson 4, we asked the question, "Am I already using artificial intelligence?" The answer is most likely, "Yes!"

In Lesson 5, we explored how jobs will be affected and concluded that entry-level positions will be automated or replaced by AI.

Finally, in Lesson 6, we reviewed what's next for artificial intelligence.

It was great having you in this course and we hope to see you again!