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Artificial Intelligence (AI)

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What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a broad field of computer science that creates computer-powered systems that can perform tasks that replicate human reasoning, learning, problem-solving, and language understanding.

AI can now generate complex art, sort objects, recognize faces in security cameras, detect soil moisture levels, and a broad range of other tasks across every industry. Learn how AI works to replicate human senses:

What Do People Need to Know?

What you need to know about AI will depend on how you plan to use AI, or if you will become a creator/ developer of AI tools. Most people won't know how they plan to use AI until they learn what exists. So libraries can offer resources for these groups of people:

  • The Everyday User: Explore and understand AI tools that already exist, incorporate tools that can be helpful, understand societal impacts, and ensure privacy & security.
  • The Innovator: Individuals or groups who want to use AI in their business, organization, or to solve a community problem need to know how to design and build AI solutions, how AI team roles work, and AI ethics.
  • The Job Seeker: Individuals looking for an AI-related career will want to get hands-on with the technology, understand potential careers, and connect with local businesses, education & training resources.

Across the board, everyone wants to explore which tools and new applications of AI exist to find what works for their particular situation.

Additional Resources

Use these resource to learn more about AI yourself, and refer patrons to curated resources.

Real World Solutions

AI is helping to solve problems in energy, healthcare, construction, manufacturing, retail, agriculture, education, architecture, and nearly every industry under the sun.

This video from Bernard Marr shows how AI appears in everyday life:

Check out these use cases and AI-powered solutions to learn more:

What Could Go Wrong?

The same issues we have with the computers and the internet extend out to AI capabilities. What happens to all the data that is collected by these devices? How can the information be used? By whom? What can we do to keep our information and personal identities safe and secure?

One of the biggest potential problems with AI is how the algorithms can reflect human bias. Learn how it works in this video:

Additional Resources

How It's Made

Technology is all about people. The design, development, use and application of technology is all centered around people. Explore how AI is made by people, for people.

Start by watching the machine learning team at Amazon and learn how they work with other departments:

Additional Resources

If you have a specific use case in mind, try getting involved in local or online tech groups to decide just how in depth your team should be to get started. Every solution is different!

 

Try it in the Library

Try it in the Library

Try these tools and activities to learn more about AI in your community:

There are additional learning options in the Learning Communities section.

Take a look at this detailed tutorial to see how Machine Learning for Kids uses Scratch programming to teach machine learning basics:

 

Learning Communities

If you’re curious about how to get started with machine learning, or already have a solution in mind that you want to build, head to these learning communities. Try getting involved in discussion forums, or ask for a consultation with an IoT expert to make sure you’re headed in the right direction for your solution.

Note: You might have to try a few different online communities before you find one that works for you!