This Is What An AI Actually 'Sees' When It Uses Data To 'Look' At Its Environment

Artificial intelligence is growing more pervasive by the day. You can find them in everything from your phone, to the city around you, to even appliances.

But have you ever thought about what it's like to experience the world from an AI's perspective?

Silvio Carta, head of art and design at the Design Research Group at the University of Hertfordshire, sought to explain this in an authored piece for The Conversation. He talks about how we take AI for granted in this day and age, but the mechanics behind them are truly spectacular.

Not to mention that, if we better understood how they work, we would be in a better situation to judge what data we don't mind sharing regarding our privacy, where AI is concerned.

How AI can "see"

For one thing, he says that if we want to see the way machines do, we have to disregard everything we've learned as humans. "This means discounting everything we usually perceive with our senses and rationalize through our brain, and instead go through a step-by-step process of data acquisition," Carta says.

He demonstrates this with a project he calls 'The Machine's Eye'. This is a visual simulation of the step-by-step process through which a hypothetical AI system deciphers an environment based on the data it picks up, and profiles the people in it.

It starts from pitch-black, representing an AI with no information. Over time though, it gathers more data from microphones, smartphones, CCTV cameras, and other sensors, gradually painting a picture of the room around it.

With all of that, the AI is able to identify the dimensions of the room and the purpose it serves, the number of people inside, the languages being spoken, genders of the participants, and even their conversations. After that, it can cross-reference this physical information with data from their social media profiles, databases, and more.

It's an enlightening look into what AI can achieve, and another reminder of why protecting our data is important.