Top Rated AI Companies in Canada

Artificial Intelligence is the final step in the development of autonomous technology, and gives us a real possibility of having helpful, independent robots that can do any number of tasks. Not like that odd Will Smith movie though, obviously.

But there is a vast difference between a machine that can, for instance, recognise the difference between an apple and a potato, and one that can navigate to the store by itself, which is why for a long time the industry has sought to find a way to classify AI into different types in terms of capabilities.

The system that developed relates the artificial intelligence's capabilities with that of the human mind, and according to this system of classification, there are four types of Artificial Intelligence or AI-based systems: reactive machines, limited memory machines, theory of mind, and self-aware AI.

Current technology is at the limited memory stage, representing everything from chatbots and virtual assistants to self-driving vehicles. The next stage, theory of mind, is where current development and theory are focused, but there are no operating examples yet.

Artificial intelligence is widely used to provide personalised recommendations to people, based for example on their previous searches and purchases or other online behaviour. AI is hugely important in commerce: optimising products, planning inventory, logistics etc. It is how Amazon recommendations and other similar services operate, as well as things like Netflix suggestions for the next series you can watch (it's a miracle that we get anything else done!).

But its not just in commerce that you can find AI. Have you ever used an online chat system to get product care or find out something? These are mostly chatbots, which run on AI, so you are actually asking a robot why your order didn't go through, even if it is one that exists only as data.

Then there are more complex applications such as driverless cars, which learn on the go and based around perhaps the most advanced AI algorithms yet developed. All of these things and more use AI, and with things like AI driven image generation, they are reaching into almost every aspect of life and industry today.

AI, at every level, is designed to enable machines to do tasks that we would normally have to do ourselves. In the early days of machinery, this was things like spinning jenny that revolutionised the textile industry during the industrial revolution, but today, where tasks are so complex, basic machinery cannot be the replacement.

Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of the human process by machines (computer systems). These processes include the learning, reasoning, and self-correction. We need Artificial Intelligence (AI) because the work that we need to do is increasing day-to-day. So, it's a good idea to automate the routine work.

With even that routine work requiring levels of autonomous thinking, we are at the point where AI driven solutions are the only thing that can effectively replace the human in such tasks. While in the past a basic machine was a step up from doing everything by hand, now we are trying to replace the combination of human and machine with just a machine, and the human element must be accounted for, which is where AI comes in.

Artificial intelligence is ultimately dependent on the technology we have available, including both computing and storage power. AI works by combining large amounts of data with fast, iterative processing and intelligent algorithms, allowing the software to learn automatically from patterns or features in the data.

It is only in the last decade that both the computing power and data access have been fast enough to make AI a practical option at reasonable costs, and today chatbots and other AI installations rely on vast data stores in the cloud and fast, easy access to that pool of information. This applies to things like auto-driving vehicles too, which collect data from cameras and other sensors, each journey generating huge volumes of data that are then fed back into systems to improve responses and so on.

Even at a much less complex area, with AI processing of images and video, increasing data that algorithm has access to continually increases performance. Computer graphics giant Nvidia use this approach in their systems for upscaling images to higher resolutions for instance.

Because AI differs so much in terms of scope and ability, even the actual product AI is connected to can vary between self-driving and a chatbot, assessing the cost of AI is very dependent on what it is needed to do and how it should do it.

For instance, you can rent generic chatbot technology to plug into your website for $50 a month or even less, and the price is falling as more competition enters the market. These solutions deliver an engaging customer experience and save significant sums compared to having a live team to answer customer questions, but they remain relatively limited in what they can do. In comparison, custom AI solutions cost anywhere from $6000 to over $300,000AUD.

As you can imagine, the more complex the task, and the more unique the task, the more tailored the AI needs to be, the higher the development cost.