It’s amazing how initial break-through innovations fail upon the first launch yet eventually scale exponentially many years later as related support systems and technologies improve. Such is the case with artificial intelligence and specifically artificial neural networks. Originally conceived in 1943, neural networks found limited success within certain industries but never caught on universally in part due to inadequate infrastructural requirements like computing power and data. But, with the advent of infrastructure ranging from telecommunications, big data, computing power and IoT, neural networks may have found a ripe environment to plant its roots and grow tremendously.
One opportunity where artificial neural networks have a tremendous opportunity is within smart cities. Cities with the right IoT infrastructure can gather data collected through sensors such as monitoring temperature, air pressure, humidity, pollution levels, intelligent video surveillance, traffic cameras, and systems of record and enable artificial neural networks to identify patterns and help solve complex problems.
As a recent article by Kameshwar Rao Sorda, Solutions Director, Huawei Enterprise Southern Africa stated,
Artificial neural networks work by analysing the millions of data points collected, for ‘training purposes’. The process gradually provides computers with the capability of calculating with a certain degree of probability the identification of basic patterns from raw data such as shapes, sequences, frequencies, colours, order, and more. By stacking layers upon layers of patterns in a neural network model, they are able to accurately identify patterns of greater complexity.
When innovations like neural networks find a home among other emerging technologies, incredibly new use cases suddenly transform the way we live. Clearly, privacy will continue to be a serious throughline challenge across these new innovations yet the way we live and work will be disrupted. And, for the most part, I see a spectacular vision for the future. Read the entire article at www.itnewsafrica.com
