The reality of artificial intelligence: Konstantinos Sgantzos talks to The Bitcoin Bridge

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“Artificial Intelligence” (AI) is probably one of the most hyped—or over-hyped—buzzwords in the technology industry. What does it really mean? Is it a sci-fi trope, a marketing term, something that could actually help humanity, a new dawn, a threat… or all of the above? Researcher Konstantinos Sgantzos helps clear it up in this week’s episode of The Bitcoin Bridge.

Konstantinos is probably one of the best people to ask about all this. As a researcher with the department of Computer Science & Bioinformatics at Greece’s University of Thessaly, he has studied the topics of data analysis and machine learning for many years. He also recently collaborated with Ian Grigg on a paper describing how a “general” artificial intelligence could use blockchain data to help guarantee its integrity.

He’s also been known to say AI promises are often “over-hyped,” and that it doesn’t involve actual, general intelligence in the sense humans have it. It’s more analysis of information or “statistics on steroids,” focusing on single tasks rather than trying to make broad decisions across a variety of issues.

In this episode we go over some of the promises AI has given us: self-driving cars, the ability for computers to understand human conversations, economic analysis, and such. It all ties in to the concept of “Big Data” and perhaps the most important aspect of that is data integrity. No matter how great an analytical machine is, its decisions are only as good as the information it receives. To make sure this information is secure, reliable and resistant to manipulation, we need a ledger capable of recording and verifying large amounts of data. Only the BSV blockchain has this kind of capability.

We also look at what AI actually is, and talk about some developments over the past few decades that made current and future systems possible. For researchers and programmers there have been surprises along with disappointments, unexpected challenges and others that were entirely predictable.

AI is an important topic—not only for the changes it could bring to our lives, but in keeping our expectations of its capabilities realistic. There’s a danger we could put too much trust in it, make assumptions about how “smart” a system actually is, and see AI decisions as superior to human intelligence thanks to its mystique (and a lot of sci-fi movies).

On that topic, are there any movies or stories out there that describe AI in a realistic way? Konstantinos’ answer to this might surprise a few people. Watch the full episode above to find out more, and if you’re interested, discover what resources are available to further your knowledge.

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Watch: CoinGeek Zurich panel, AI Machine Learning & Blockchain – Views from Academics & Researchers