Powerful Algorithms are Not AI

A while back I wrote a post that explained my personal feelings regarding the difference between gamification and game-based learning. I feel like now there is a new confusion going around the education industry. Powerful algorithms versus AI. Artificial intelligence learns and grows on its own whereas powerful algorithms are just that. An algorithm has limitations. 

An example of a powerful algorithm used in education would be something like voice to text or the opposite; text to speech. You will notice when you use one of these tools that there will be limitations. For example it may pronounce a word incorrectly or it may write the wrong thing when you talk. This is because while it is powerful it does not learn the more it is used.

AI on the other hand learns on its own. Yes it is still a type of algorithm but it is a much more powerful algorithm that has the ability to pull from its previous experiences. This is why the more people that are using AI the better the AI is becoming. It is also why we need to hope Sarah Connors is ready for us in the future because we are leading the path to the robots revolution.

If you are attending workshops and conferences on AI please remember to take it with a grain of salt. Some of these so-called experts are not experts at all. Honestly I think it's impossible to be an expert at this point because AI is still such a new technology in the education field.

Now when Data becomes a real person, I'll be first in line at Comic-Con to get his autograph.