Apply artificial intelligence and machine learning

- In 1950, Professor Alan Turing created a test for computers called the Imitation Game. The basic setup was that a computer would engage in a text conversation with a human evaluator. The person would type something and the computer would respond. The computer would win the game if the human evaluator couldn't tell whether they were talking to a person or a computer. The Turing test was one of the first attempts to measure artificial intelligence or the ability of computers to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. Today, we interact with intelligent computers all the time. When I take picture on my phone, there's an app that recognizes people's faces. My bank uses software to watch for fraudulent charges. And when I shop online, many websites have chat-bots that can answer basic questions. Intelligence is a hard thing to describe and to quantify, but for practical purposes, I think we can say that intelligence has to do with analyzing information, making decisions and taking actions. Of course, intelligence is something that comes naturally for humans, but for computers to be able to make decisions and to take actions using AI, they need to have instructions or programs that tell them what to do. Some AI tools just look for patterns and exceptions. For example, my bank's computer might look for charges to my credit that occurred from a different zip code and flag those as suspicious, but there are more advanced versions of AI where computers can learn how to solve problems on their own. This is called machine learning. Machine learning generally starts out by giving a computer a set of rules to follow. But some of these rules are flexible and can be changed by the computer. Then you train the computer by giving it a bunch of sample data and providing feedback about the results. The computer uses this feedback to adjust its analysis and decision making and to change the rules. In other words, it learns and gets better through feedback and practice. These days, you can see machine learning in lots of places. I frequently use apps that have voice recognition and facial recognition. They all use machine learning and they rely on feedback to get better over time. In the supply chain world, there are companies using AI and ML to schedule production runs, order inventory, track shipments and much more. As these technologies get better, they'll take over many tasks that are being done by humans today. We can be sure that artificial intelligence and machine learning are going to play an important role in our future. Understanding how AI works can help us make the best use of both the computers and the humans in our supply chain.