Five Everyday Artificial Intelligence Examples

Thanks to the recent rise in popularity of chatbots such as ChatGPT, artificial intelligence, or AI, has become a topic of conversation in many more spaces this year than ever before. Discussions surrounding the implications that AI will have on business operations, personal use of technology, the world of academia, and more are happening with increased frequency as the two, powerful letters – A.I. – are seen more and more commonly in our daily lives. 

While the dialogue surrounding AI has become more commonplace due to recent headlines, its presence in our homes and offices is nothing new. AI is more familiar to us than we might imagine – below, we’ll take a look at some of the areas in our lives which AI is seen every day.

Personal Assistants – Smart, or AI, personal assistants include Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google’s Google Assistant. These voice assistants function via use of NLP, or natural language processing; this technology is what allows Siri or Alexa to interpret human language and use it to scour the internet to come up with an answer to whatever question you have asked. For example, when you ask what the weather is like in your area for the following day, your personal virtual assistant will determine your location and then look up the weather for the requested time.

Social Media – When it comes to social media apps, we often hear about the notorious algorithm. This is the term which describes the curated content that appears on your home page of a social media app that is unique to your interests; if you find that you watch a few baking videos and political debate clips in a row, the next time you login to the app, it seems that every other video is made up of similar content. Why? The algorithm. Your algorithm is created via the use of AI recognizing which content you spend more time viewing and suggesting similar posts for you to see. AI is also used by social media sites to try to avoid the spread of false new articles and to rid platforms of AI-generated bots, or fake accounts, in order to try and streamline and improve the users’ experience.

Streaming Platforms – Similarly to social media, streaming services utilize AI in order to suggest relevant videos, movies, TV shows, and more for your viewing pleasure. Not only can you influence this algorithm by watching multiple different things with similar themes, but many platforms also allow for you to provide feedback on the suggestions provided by AI, even if you do not watch it – for example, Netflix currently has a ‘dislike’ (thumbs down), ‘like’ (thumbs up), and ‘love’ (double thumbs up) button that you can use to indicate whether something you watch is content which you would like to see more of or not so much.

Face ID – According to one survey, 70% of phone users in the US utilize face ID on their phone. This is the technology which scans your face instead of using a password - this can be used to unlock your phone, purchase something online, or even login to your bank account. Via the use of over 30,000 invisible infrared dots, the front facing camera on your smartphone compares the scan of your face against a massive database of faces to ensure that you are the legitimate user of the phone. 

While this feature can make using many applications on your phone easier on a daily basis, use caution when utilizing it for things like banking – if this is your only way to login to your account, this is not a smart idea; however, if face ID is used in tandem with a traditional username and password, and even a multi-factor authentication feature such as a one-time passcode, then this technology can actually aid in your personal cybersecurity. The key with face ID is to not be lazily reliant on it alone.

Grammar suggestions – Microsoft Outlook, Grammarly, and Google Suite are among the many applications that provide users not only with spell check suggestions in the event of a typo, but also recommended grammar updates as well. When typing up a work email lately, you might have noticed that a suggestion will appear to remove a word from a sentence to make it clearer and more concise, or you might have seen a few dots under a word as a reminder to add in a comma where it should be included. This is a simple, everyday form of AI in our lives.

While the future of our world appears as though it will be more and more influenced by AI, we might find comfort in knowing it has had a presence in our day-to-day operations already. Protect yourself and your data by not giving up any more information than is necessary, as AI is smart and continuously learning technology.

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