Artificial Intelligence may have seemed like something out of a high-tech sci-fi film a couple of years ago, but now it is here and making waves. The technology is so useful that we use it in a lot of our everyday life without realising, so here are four exciting uses of AI in your day-to-day life!

• Social media

Where does your newsfeed come from? Well, the good news is that it isn’t magic; the more interesting news is that it’s from you. Social media networks gather your likes and interests to personalise your news feed. An AI will often have specific goals set by the platform, which determines what content you see. These goals include user retention (how much time you spend on the site), advertising or awareness about a social issue.

• To unlock your phone

In the stone age, we had to remember a password or just leave our phone without protection. But in the sleek future, we now have a fingerprint or facial recognition software on our devices that will let us in. These needed AI to work well because when we show our face to the software, it is always slightly different. This makes it very difficult for a computer to verify that we are who we say we are. This same technology is being used in airports and even being trialled for crime prevention.

• Shopping

Online shopping has become all the rage in the last year or so due to the shops shutting for public safety. AI also has its part to play here; by using your past shopping habits, companies can market items that you are more likely to buy. The big downside to this is that we get chased around by adverts for that same product after we’ve bought something.

• Instead of playing chess against yourself…

Or any other game, for that matter, you could play against the computer. Some of the earliest AI’s were designed to play games that previously only humans could play by finding innovative ways of turning complex decision making into a mathematical equation. Check out this programmer’s step by step creation of a chess algorithm from scratch.

AI can seem quite scary, and we’re often left with an image from the Terminator franchise or Hall 9000 not letting you do that. The reality is that AI is still in relatively early stages and needs a couple of huge breakthroughs before it can properly take over the world. Phew!

If you’d like to help take computing to the next level, then give our course in AI a look. It’s an excellent career to pursue, with plenty of fantastic learning opportunities that you can do from home. Our courses come with tutor support to help you get the most from them and to help you create the next generation of artificial minds.