While I was in 4th standard, I mugged up the sentence, “The Data in processed form is called information”. And, it took me adulthood to fully understand it. It isn’t wrong to say that we are flooded with information. We live in the age of data, the age of information at our fingertips. And, I am sure you won’t disagree that it feels magical. Clive Humby must be in excellent observation mode in 2006 when he said, “Data is the new oil”. It has proved more than real since then.
I was listening to The Weeknd’s Starboy a few days ago on a music application. After the song ended, the app recommended me Billie Ellish’s Bad guy. What a beautiful song that is! Well, that is the power of a sound recommendation system working on the back-end of an application.
I was awed to learn that some of these recommendation systems are based on Deep Boltzmann machines. The basic concept behind the algorithm comes from the fact that any universal system tries to drift towards a lower energy state. Confused? For instance, if we drop an ink-drop in a water bucket, it scatters rather than forming a blob as it is moving towards its lower energy state. Another example would be if we spray perfume in a room, the smell travels throughout the room. Why? The same idea of a system moving towards a lower energy state. I was spellbound to learn that this is the concept behind our modern recommendation systems that numerous websites and applications use each day. We have it all at our fingertips.
Isn’t it human-like, if a system collects information about your habits, learns from it, and finally gives you suggestions? It is like a friend in need.
Being a humble student of Deep Learning, I get an opportunity even to learn the concepts of the subjects like Physics and Chemistry; the ones that the teachers skimmed through while I was in school. With the help of deep learning, I can appreciate them now. It is fascinating.
Don’t believe me? Well, most of us know that Mathematics and Statistics are a core part of Machine learning and Deep learning technologies. But, as and when you dig deeper, you are humbled each day to learn that the domain contains a pinch of everything and it makes it even more exciting.
When I first read about the Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence during my college, I was amazed to learn that the algorithms are based on the actual working of the ants and the swarm of birds respectively. Then, there is the Genetic algorithm, which takes the idea from Natural Selection. Isn’t it crazy and damn exciting to see so many things at work?
It is quite right that AI will be driving our lives soon. Be it smart homes, self-driving cars, chat-bots, smartphones, Robotics and countless other applications; AI is becoming the core engine running most of the things around us. And, we enjoy it thoroughly without even being aware that it is the AI at work. Such is the entanglement of AI in our lives. What’s the fuel? Of course, it is DATA. Though the journey is challenging and difficult to grasp. But, once you can relish how it works, you can’t turn back.
Stories About Life 