A Developer's Guide to Building AI Applications, 2nd Edition

Foreword

The creators of the modern computer wanted to augment human intellect and expand our capabilities beyond the limitations of our collective brainpower. When researchers and computer scientists in the 1950s conceived of the “thinking computer,” they started a rapid evolution toward AI, laying the groundwork for technology that would have a tremendous impact on the world for decades to come.

AI is now everywhere. People do not even realize that AI is powering their experiences. While AI is now present in practically everything we use, from thermostats to sprinkler systems, it is also powering opportunities in new frontiers, such as autonomous vehicles, pharmaceutical research, and precision agriculture. AI is an exciting frontier for developers to create powerful and innovative ways to approach hard-to-solve problems.

While AI was once solely the domain of researchers and institutions, the recent availability of AI infrastructure, platforms, and services means that all the power of AI is now available to developers to build solutions with intelligence. Cloud AI services and tools make developing AI-powered solutions possible—including machine learning, knowledge mining, intelligent agents, and pretrained models—without requiring specialized knowledge.

The past few years have seen a leap in the adoption of AI, catalyzed by vast amounts of digital data, application services, and enormous computing power. As a result, AI technologies such as natural-language understanding, ...