V - The magazine of the VOLLMER Group - 2019

Artificial intelligence ...at home Voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, Cortana, etc. can do more than just read out the weather forecast for their users. They are now able to communicate with people. These systems process requests and give answers that are both semantically and factually correct. Voice assistants employ a huge number of speech elements. It's only by doing this that Siri or Alexa can understand their users and select the right answer from their database. They take all information that's relevant to the user from the Internet. In the entertainment sector, providers like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Spotify are leading the way with film, series, music and audiobooks. All these on-demand services have one thing in common: They collate individu- al playlists, based on user behaviour and preference. This is also an underlying principle of the well-known video plat- form YouTube. The AI analyses user behaviour and categorises the con- tent and topics. Intelligent temperature regula- tion systems adjust our homes' A lan Turing laid the key foundations for research into artificial intelligence (AI). The British logician and math- ematician developed the Turing Test in the 1940s to test for the presence of artificial intelligence. The term itself, artificial intelligence, first appeared in 1956, however, when the Ameri- can computer scientist John McCarthy used it in the title of a project proposal for a conference. There were plans to pres- ent programs which played checkers and chess, could prove various theories and even interpret texts. Today, artificial intelligence can be found flawlessly interact- ing with humans at many different interfaces. Most of all, these programmes make our day-to-day life easier and more convenient. 8 PERSPECTIVES