AI in Recognition and Decisions

Artificial intelligence is software that carries out tasks which normally need human intelligence, such as recognising a face or spotting an unusual pattern. It can work through far more information than a person could, and the answer it gives is usually a suggestion that a person then acts on.

Recognising and diagnosing

Facial recognition measures a face — the distance between the eyes, the shape of the jaw — and compares it with faces it has already seen. Airport e-gates use it to match you to the photo in your passport, so passengers pass through in seconds instead of queuing at a desk, and some banking apps use it to confirm it is really you before a payment.

In medical diagnosis, a system compares a patient's symptoms, test results and history with thousands of earlier cases and suggests conditions the doctor may not have considered. It gives a second opinion; the doctor still examines the patient and decides. For drug development, AI predicts which chemical compounds are likely to work against a disease, so scientists test the most promising ones first instead of trying hundreds at random, which saves years of work.

Driving, checking and hiring

Self-driving cars use sensors to steer, brake and follow a route without a driver. Driver-assistance systems in ordinary cars brake for you if you do not react, keep you in lane and hold a safe gap in traffic. A mistake here can injure someone, so the driver must stay alert and ready to take over.

Fraud detection software learns what a normal insurance claim or tax return looks like, then flags the few that do not fit so staff investigate those rather than reading every one. In recruitment, AI can rank CVs against the job description and have a shortlist ready in minutes, saving the hiring team hours, though a person should check it because a ranking is only as fair as the CVs it learned from.