Key Terms

Artificial Intelligence: The ability of machines to autonomously perform tasks usually requiring human intelligence [e.g. speech recognition, decision-making, and language translation] and to evolve without human interference.

Bayesian Models: A method of analysis that applies probabilities to statistical problems, and provides the tools to update inferences with evidence of new data.

Blackbox Algorithm: Complex code at the heart of AI, which can be viewed in terms of an AI’s inputs and end results, without any transparency of how an AI or algorithm was designed, what data helped build it, or how it works.

Data Analytics: The aggregation of data to report a result, search for a pattern and find relationships between variables based on previous examples. Assumptions are made by humans, and data is queried to confirm that relationship, but it does not predict the impact from a change in a variable.

Deep Learning: A technique within machine learning where artificial neural networks (algorithms inspired by the human brain) give machines an enhanced ability to learn from large amounts of data, and find and amplify small patterns. Similar to how humans learn from experience, the deep learning algorithm perform a task repeatedly, tweaking it to improve the outcome each time.

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs): An innovation of machine learning to create new data instances that resemble training data e.g. creating images that look like photographs of human faces, even though the faces do not belong to a real person.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): Legislation adopted by the European Union in May 2016 and enforced May 2018 to protect the personal information of individuals. GDPR alters how businesses and public sector organizations can handle the information of their customers, and boosts the rights of individuals to control their information. It also affects companies based in the EU that have EU citizens’ personal data in their servers and databases.

Kantian Ethics: The notion that one should always respect the humanity in others, and that one should only act in accordance with rules that could hold for everyone developed by philosopher Immanuel Kant.

Machine Learning: An AI system that trains itself using data to find patterns in massive amounts of data, make assumptions, and test and learn autonomously without human intervention. Commonly used for services like recommendation systems e.g. Netflix, Alexa, Spotify, and applied for processes like navigation and mapping in self-driving cars.

Predictive Analytics: The process of using data to predict what might happen based on historical data, which relies on human interaction to create and test assumptions.