8 Top Artificial Intelligence Facts All Developers Need to Know

In this article you will learn about:

1. What Is Artificial Intelligence

2. When Artificial Intelligence Was Created

3. Why Are People Talking So Much About Artificial Intelligence These Days

4. Is Artificial Intelligence Good or Bad for Developers

5. Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Developers and Make them Loose Jobs

7. What You Can Do to Learn More about Artificial Intelligence

8. Other Questions that You May Have About Artificial Intelligence

1. What Is Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is an area of activity that uses machines to emulate the behavior of humans, typically using software to replicate functions that humans use to solve problems.

The respective Wikipedia page has a more elaborate definition of Artificial Intelligence.

2. When Artificial Intelligence Was Created

The oldest records of artificial intelligence applications were from 1943 when the first known paper was recognized. That was a paper about design for Turing-complete "artificial neurons" written by McCulloch and Pitts, also mentioned in the same Wikipedia page about Artificial Intelligence.

I learned about the principles of Artificial Intelligence in the last years of my graduation in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering at the Universidade de Aveiro in Portugal in the discipline of Neural Networks.

3. Why Are People Talking So Much About Artificial Intelligence These Days

You may wonder if artificial intelligence was created so many decades ago, why only these days are people talking so much about this.

First, there are many well-known artificial intelligence applications like Google Search, Google Translate, Google Maps, Waze, credit card payment fraud detection, etc., just to name a few that I use almost every day.

You may also use these applications. Whether artificial intelligence is used in these applications for most users is irrelevant as long as they work well. So these applications' use of artificial intelligence is not commented on among lay users.

Second, artificial intelligence applications for lay users started to become more popular with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. This tool lets lay users ask questions in natural language and similarly get answers as if it were real users writing the responses.

Since ChatGPT became popular, many lay users and the general press started to comment on this application.

4. Is Artificial Intelligence Good or Bad for Developers

Artificial intelligence is just a set of methods and tools to develop software that helps solve problems in an automated way that real humans often solve.

In that sense, artificial intelligence is good to use synthetic intelligence methods and tools because the work of humans can be done faster or with better quality.

For instance, I use Grammarly to improve the quality of my English, as you may see in this article.

Still, be warned that sometimes Artificial intelligence tools and methods may fail because they learn from the mistakes of other humans. In that case, it is better to leave the final decision of using the work of artificial intelligence tools and methods to the users, who are the actual humans.

For instance, sometimes credit card companies issue false alarms of fraud when you use your credit card. In that case, you need to contact the credit card company to tell them you were trying to use the credit card so you can try using it again, and the transaction is approved.

Also, be aware that some Artificial Intelligence systems are based on outdated information. So, data returned by artificial intelligence that was true in the past may become wrong in the present and needs to be updated.

5. Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Developers and Make them Loose Jobs

Well, it depends. Artificial intelligence is a set of methods and tools to develop software. If you have job offers that require fake intelligence skills and you do not have those skills, you will lose those jobs.

If you have those skills, you can apply to those jobs if the companies find that you are a suitable candidate to work on those jobs.

Still, many jobs do not require artificial intelligence skills now. The number of jobs requiring artificial intelligence tools may increase in the future.

So, I suggest that you learn more about artificial intelligence tools and methods once you can apply them in your projects to be prepared to qualify for projects of customers in the future.

6. When Should I Use Artificial Intelligence

For instance, analyzing a text to detect if the orthography and grammar are correct is a problem that follows a pattern. That pattern is that sometimes, humans make mistakes when they enter a text in an application.

You may use traditional algorithms to solve the problem when the pattern is clear and straightforward.

For instance, if you want to check the orthography of text and suggest possible fixes, you may look in a dictionary to see if the spelling of each work is correct.

When the pattern is unclear or complex, artificial intelligence algorithms may be better to solve the problem.

For instance, if you want to check the grammar of a text and suggest possible fixes, that is a complex problem because there are many ways to write the exact text with correct grammar.

In that case, an artificial intelligence-based solution may be better because it may be trained to accept all known forms of correct grammar that a sentence may have.

7. What You Can Do to Learn More about Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence methods and tools are suited to solve problems that follow a pattern.

You can learn more about artificial intelligence in many places. For instance, a simple way to get started is to study the artificial intelligence APIs that perform tasks useful for the applications you want to develop.

In the PHP Classes site, many packages use those APIs. Use the PHP Classes site search feature to find relevant packages that use artificial intelligence APIs to start studying the code of PHP packages and their usage examples.

You may also want to read previous articles about this topic, like one about How to Prepare Yourself for the Future PHP Artificial Intelligence Projects that covers existing packages that use artificial intelligence.

8. Other Questions that You May Have About Artificial Intelligence

If you have other questions about artificial intelligence not answered in this article, please comment below so I can answer them in a future article.