How does AI work: A brief overview

The past year 2017 has been great. But as we move forward in the technology world, the word we hear more and more often in our everyday lives is AI or Artificial Intelligence. Surely giving intellect to an inanimate object seems to be a bit bizarre but it is exciting nonetheless. AI has given us a simpler way to carry out our jobs and will hopefully continue to do so in at least the next five years. It has given us our personal assistants built right into our smartphones and cars that can drive themselves at a price point that people can actually buy. But the uses are obviously much much greater than smartphones and building a car in which you can both text and drive, the goal is to make all kinds of efficient systems. For example an Astronomical centre where complex operations are carried out in the fastest way possible or an AI guided electrical power grid that can provide maximum power at minimum wastage. The possibilities here, are endless.

So how does AI actually work?

Here are the basic steps in which an AI system is built…

STEP 1. Neural Framework

If this topic has interested you, you’ve probably heard about the term “Neural Network”. A neural network refers to the architectural blueprint in which the the “brain cells” or “neurons” which will be placed in the body of the system. We have public projects like Google’s TensorFlow which is a proven architectural neural network model which can be optimized to do a variety of different tasks. It’s more like the DNA structure in an intelligent system.

STEP 2. Modification

So of course, in order to carry out different tasks, we need to optimize how the system works to get the maximum benefit. For example, we will never put powerful GPUs in a server computer, and will not put powerful processors in a computer for mining cryptocurrencies.

STEP 3. Training

Now comes the most interesting and the most difficult part of AI programming. AI utilizes machine learning. Just like a baby child, at this point, the computer has a brain but the computer doesn’t know what to do with it. It now needs training and guidance to successfully carry out the tasks it was meant to do. For example, if you ask the system what is 2+3 at this point, it won’t be able to answer. But, if you say manipulate 2 and 3 in such a way using mathematical operations such as plus, minus, multiplication and division so that the result is 5, it might be able to figure it out that addition is the answer after several reruns and optimizations for the first time. At this time, the system has gained IQ because it knows the result as well as the procedure from which it came. With more tasks and optimizations for hundreds of days, the AI is finally ready for practical use. And like living beings, it is based on learning experiences. It learns from its previous mistakes and improves upon it each time, acquiring greater and greater efficiency after each use.

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What’s ARM?

Back in the 90’s , Intel has patented their famous and one of a a kind x86 architecture of processors which ran windows and macintosh as good as it can get. What they essentially do is arrange the instructions from the operating system and organizes them as needed to run operations exactly in the order as required which reduced error probabilities. currently, this technology is licensed to AMD which might be also their only competition in the desktop space.

ARM stands for architectural model and is also a company which brought a new kind of processors. These were formerly known as RISC or Reduced Instruction Set Computing which lacked the organizing capabilities of an x86 architectural processors. These processors focused on lighter OSes such as various flavours of Linux, best examples being Android by Google and iOS by Apple. In this scenarios, the operating system did the tasks for them.

 

Image Courtesy : The Indian Express

But this is 2018. Today, almost all the end user operating systems provide with the instructions which can run the computer without an x86 architecture with a few tweaks. This where ARM comes into the picture of Windows based computing in desktops PCs. ARM chipsets does less work which means we will get more power efficient. Sure, at first there will be a lot of bugs in the Windows space but with expertise and time , it will get better. The first PC to commercially be launched using an ARM based chipset will house a Snapdragon 845 processor with 20+ hours of standby battery life provided by HP in the first quarter of 2018 in their Pavilion lineup of PCs.

Why you should use Linux

Linux has been a part of our lives for a long time now. For a long time, it was only considered as an operating system suitable for Servers. But over the years, it has become better in terms of personal computers. Now more than ever. It is hands down easier to use compared to Windows and Mac OS, some people might disagree to this but introduce Linux and Windows to a newbie in the world of computers, and you will get your answer.

Zorin OS – A Linux distribution

Linux is also the most widely used Operating System in corporations and cyber security firms due to the many useful developer tools available which can be utilized by programmers and white hackers to build and protect strong and powerful applications.

So here are the reasons I prefer Linux to Windows and Mac OS.

High Security

One of the main features of the Linux environment is the security aspect of it compared to other commonly used traditional operating systems. Installing a Linux distribution is the easiest way to protect your computer from malware and viruses. Softwares and running processes cannot make any change unless the user is logged in as the administrative root user and provides permission to every single change that the process wants to effect. Internet browsing is faster and more secure too. After all, there is no  Ransomware attack on a Linux System. It is next to impossible. Furthermore, users can install Kali Linux to make their computer built like a tank on an OS level. Users have more privacy as their activities are not monitored over the internet by corporate tech giants like Microsoft and Apple.

High Stability

Windows users have often come across crashes too many times on their usage no matter what version they are on. Even the latest build from Windows 10 crashes sometimes. Sometimes driving the owner to reinstall Windows altogether. Linux is built just the opposite way. It is fast and light and can even run on low end hardware with RAM as low as 1GB without any lag or crashes. This extreme stable environment of Linux has allowed it to run in over 90% of the world’s servers and Supercomputers. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter all use Linux servers.

Free of cost

Linux distributions are completely free of cost and most popular ones are even available via torrent files. Making computers cheaper and accessible to the world at a substantially lower cost. Linux has made sure that students get office tools for free. IT guys their developer tools and even Media professionals to have audio, video and photo editing software to be free without any annoying Ads.

Open source

The beauty of Linux is that it’s Open Source which means the codes used to build Linux are completely free and accessible to users and developers to view, add or remove their own code to make the system suitable to their needs. This is the main reason why Linux has hundreds of flavours for users to choose from and the super easy to use environment. Don’t like how your OS works? Just make one for yourself. It is quite literally built for the people, by the people. Open source is the foundation of freedom to use and create software which is basically why Google exists, to help more people experience the power of the electronic world and connecting the world together.

Here are the 5 most widely used Linux distributions. Click on them to see more.

1. Ubuntu
2. Arch Linux
3. Parrot Linux
4. Elementary OS
5. Debian

Customization

Visual and software customization on a system wide level is easy to use and is available in GNOME, KDE and many other environments to make your computer work and look like the way you like it. Instead of one big program, Linux is broken down into many small pakages of programs which perform very well. You can even automate and schedule routine tasks to carry out for productivity and maintaining the system.

Education

The Linux desktop environment is the best for learning how a computer actually works. It is perfect for a student to learn about the OS, software development and aid innovation.

Strong Online Community

Linux support community is arguably the biggest online community out there. Millions of users, developers, gamers have come together to make our computer experience easier and help us out. Now that we have Steam OS in our list of distributions, Steam games like CS GO run on Linux better than any other system. Red Hat has 24×7 support for applications and services required by their users. This kind of community helps an environment to grow bigger, stronger, secure, fast and easy to use. Helping people to afford the joy of internet and computer to connect with the rest of the world without any worries.

Experience the power of the Penguin to make your lives easier. For free.

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