Advanced technology and children develop in similar ways. (source: TSS archive)
Martin Spano is the author of Artificial Intelligence in a Nutshell, a book that explores the mystified subject of artificial intelligence (AI) with simple, non-technical language. Spano’s passion for AI began after he watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, but he insists this ever-changing technology is not just the subject for sci-fi novels and movies; artificial intelligence is present in our everyday lives.
The story of Alex Krizhevsky
Alex Krizhevsky was born in Ukraine but lived most of his life in Canada. After finishing his undergraduate studies, he continued as a postgraduate under the supervision of Geoffrey Hinton, legendary computer scientist and cognitive psychologist, one of the foremost advocates of using artificial neural networks for artificial intelligence. Krizhevsky stumbled upon an algorithm by Hinton that used graphics cards instead of processors for its execution. He applied this tweak to artificial neural networks with more layers, so-called deep neural networks. Soon after that, Sutskever, another student under the supervision of Hinton, learned about the Krizhevsky algorithm and proposed to use it for the ImageNet competition. In this contest, teams try to achieve the highest possible accuracy in image classification, or what a computer sees in a picture. It is very easy for humans but immensely tricky for computers. With Hinton as an advisor, Krizhevsky and Sutskever entered the competition in 2012 with this exotic idea of using deep neural network designed by Krizhevsky and devastated all competitors. These events gave birth to a new, unprecedented boom in artificial intelligence.
