AI described
Artificial Intelligence is generally misunderstood as consciousness as we've been brainwashed through sci-fi movies throughout our life, When we hear Artificial Intelligence we interpret it as a human-level smart system that can operate the tasks that otherwise only a human can.
Artificial Intelligence is in itself a very basic concept and it has been under development since 1950s, the very early estimates of researchers expected technology to be so advanced by 1980s that a human-level Artificial General Intelligence could be created. (AGI or Strong AI is different from conventional term AI)
The problem however was much more challenging than anticipated which resulted in a very subtle growth in AI technology over the last 5 decades. However recent exponential growth in raw processing power, global socialization, smart devices like smartphones have accelerated the interest and growth of AI technology.
At its core AI just has to be Intelligent to be considered as AI. There's no definitive term for Intelligence but most researchers agree to certain traits that makes a being or machine Intelligent
It has to have reason, knowledge/commonsense, planning, learning and communication capabilities and should be able to integrate all these skills towards common goals. In a simplified term, it should be able to make decisions based upon its intelligence.

Types of AI in current age

Right now we're living in the age of information, with over 3 billion users spread across internet it is possible to assume most of them spend a lot of time growing their virtual self on social networks, researching new methods with increasingly superior communication and sharing data with each other.
When big tech companies like Google and Facebook invest a hefty fortune on researching AI technology you know something's up. Google's Deepmind is a form of AI that learns a set of tasks by itself through self learning, It is given certain information of virtual environment, obstacles, and physics of models and it figures out how to overcome those obstacles by trying different probabilities of resolving those problems, it is quite smart at this as it can learn the point of failure each time and try to find a better solution next time. Google's Deepmind beat world's top player in an ancient chinese game GO 2 years back and since then it has evolved tremendously.
AI in itself sounds fascinating but when its accompanied with businesses who's main task in current age is to collect consumer data and store it for their own purpose whatever that may be, It certainly rings a bell over the ears.
Google owns Android and Youtube and has ownership of over dozens of Holding companies, although they will always claim that consumer privacy comes first, there's no evidence or guarantee it'll always stay that way. When you sign up for their services you're basically granting them your consent to store your data at all times, giving them an opportunity to use it as they please. In Android phones there's a submenu in privacy settings that's pre-checked when you buy the device, which states that you consent for your data to be analysed by Google analytics and help improve their services. You can however opt out of this but still there's no legal obligation on the service provider if your data is somehow misused.
Combine all the data with AI that's good at figuring out ways out of problems that're above the reach of human intellect, AI can be a real threat to humanity, there is abundance of knowledge about world history, cultural values, stock prices, economic trading all available and accessible through internet. If the Corporation that holds ownership of the AI decides to start a war between two nations to maybe turn economic conditions in their favor, the AI can be of great assistance to them as it can figure out a way for them to initiate a dispute between target countries using their weaknesses against each other, If AI can outsmart humans in complicated games, there's a high probability that it'll be able to outsmart humans in a huge number of complicated tasks.
Tesla, SpaceX, Hyperloop co-founder and CEO Elon Musk has set an initiative of Open AI which decentralizes the code of AI much like the cryptocurrency we're so fond of. This spreads ownership of the program to all of its contributors rather than a bunch of shareholders who could exploit the potential power of AI. Open AI recently defeated one of the best DOTA 2 players, DOTA 2 is much more complicated game than GO as the AI is consistently reading visual information and acting upon it rather than a limited set of rules. Open AI learnt to play the game in 2 week time period which shows its immense power of self learning as compared to an average human.

AI in itself could be the best thing that happened to humanity, advancing our living standard at unimaginable pace. But it must come safe. Certain regulations should be required to handle and make sure the AI poses no threats against humanity for the most part we're trying to catch up with AI advancements in terms of regulations but eventually it'll all turn out to be just right, Hopefully.

Disclaimer : Everything written above is opinion of the writer supported with facts and proofs, any mistake or error that you may find inappropriate should be mentioned in comments it'll be edited out if the information provided by the article is incorrect.
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