Finally, the Big Bang for AI!

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not new. In fact, it has so many false starts over the past 60 years. The term went into hibernation for a long time.

Research into AI began way back in Dartmouth College in 1956 and was constantly associated with being the next frontier in the 1980s when mainframe computers ruled and supercomputers were a ginormous investment that very few could afford.

Despite the research put in over the years, the technology never quite took off and fell flat in many instances.

However, AI seems to be having a revival of sorts. At GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose were many examples of true applications of AI across many industries — from smart cities to robotics, and automotive to security.

In his keynote address, aptly entitled Powering the AI Revolution, NVIDIA CEO and Co-founder Jensen Huang shared at length about the evolution of AI, the technologies driving the revival and the many applications developed by an ever-growing ecosystem.

Driving the new wave or resurrection of AI are three key factors — the advent of big data, advances in algorithms over the past decade and the discovery of the graphic processing units (GPUs) to power AI research in 2011.

These helped to bring about the Big Bang Of Modern AI, specifically deep learning, which can be trained by data and not scientists.

Judging from the showcase of exhibits, as well as developments shared at workshops at GTC, it looks like AI has finally arrived. The future is certainly exciting.