Xtracta + Robots And Ai

Earlier this year Xtracta’s Jonathan Spence wrote a blog on their website at http://www.xtracta.com  on the future of robots. As Jonathan says, “I no longer see a lot of concepts science fiction has developed over the years as that far-flung. The whole concept of computing (and a concept which has not changed since mechanical computing's inception more than 100 years ago) is absolute logic. A computer operates by saying "if this then do X OR if that then do Y". Of course it is a little bit more complex than that but for almost everything we do to interact with computers today, such logic is used absolutely. Artificial Intelligence tries to make this more "fuzzy" - it's an area of computing which tries to mimic the thought patterns and ability for decision making with inputs that aren't 100% set in stone.

Jonathan goes on to explain, “The term Artificial intelligence or in acronym form A.I. is a term gaining greater prevalence through a variety of computer aided applications today. It's a term used very loosely and fair enough, A.I. is a very open concept with many applications meeting the criteria for it. Generally speaking we see A.I. touted applications today as those which can deal with quite specific requirements such as Image recognition, Facial Recognition for smartphone unlock, Facial Recognition for Age/sex determination and Industrial applications such as interacting with components in a manufacturing process as an example.”

Jonathan also talks about machine learning and with Xtracta’s document data extraction technology, learning is key - especially when they start generating many, many complex relationships between their huge feature set. But compared to perhaps purely logical approaches (such as templating), it means Xtracta can service basically the whole world without having a team of people sitting and making templates for every supplier who exists around the world. The cloud approach has been the absolute backbone of this, because Xtracta can merge (and have already merged millions) of documents they have ever seen into a single unified learning pool.

As Jonathan tells it, learning to learn is the holy grail of the field of A.I, a concept known as "strong" or "general" artificial intelligence. This is a system which has machine learning but also has the ability to learn "features" or the things that it uses to make comparisons and draw conclusions. “Whether we develop general intelligence is yet to be seen. In my opinion it's inevitable. At the end of the day, the way that nature works can always be replicated by man and general intelligence is in nature (i.e. seen in humans). Our brains use what are called neurons to operate; that is an electrical pulse is fired down these with synapses forming - this is what controls our thinking and actions. There are estimated to be around 100 billion neurons in a human brain which interact to allow our consciousness and decision making abilities.”