"Artificial intelligence is as present in medical diagnostic systems as it is in a car's ABS brakes."

Jorge Elorza. PHOTO: Manuel Castells

"Both medical diagnostic systems and the ABS brakes of a car make use of fuzzy logic systems, basing their operation on artificial intelligence". This was stated by Jorge Elorza, professor at department of Physics and Applied Mathematics of the University of Navarra, who was in charge of opening the first summer course of the Navarra universities 2010 "Physics and Mathematics for everyday life".

The speaker, who gave a talk on artificial intelligence, pointed out that artificial intelligence aims to make man-made machines reason like humans. "However, knowing how humans think is still a great mystery, so the problem of transferring this procedure to machines is not simple, although it is also true that we have come a long way thanks to the development of, among other techniques, fuzzy or fuzzy logic."

As Professor Elorza explains, this knowledge extends the findings made by Aristotle in the 4th century BC. the so-called classical logic on which syllogisms are based - and introduces a basic principle of our way of reasoning: "It admits a certain uncertainty between the truth or falsity of propositions, similar to human reasoning, so that machines can offer us the best possible solution for a specific problem. For example, to find the most probable diagnosis among several".
 

Advances in daily life, computing, or the Economics

Among the everyday issues that have become reality thanks to fuzzy logic are handwriting, facial and speech recognition systems, image processing, air conditioning controls or the Tokyo bullet train, a high-speed pioneer that boasts of not reaching the average minute delay in its journeys.

"In the field of computation, communication with machines has been increasingly achieved in a language that is more similar to our own, more natural, with words, not through the binary code of the beginnings. And now a new field is being explored: computation with perceptions, where the machine would execute our orders by interpreting what we want or need," stresses the mathematician from the University of Navarra.   

Likewise, in the field of Economics artificial intelligence has found an important area development : "Many financial applications are based on this reasoning. Even the improvement of fuel efficiency in engines is following the path of artificial intelligence," adds Dr. Jorge Elorza.

"The latest advances include methods that, together with fuzzy logic, rely on neural networks -programs that learn from experience- and genetic algorithms -programs that evolve over time-, an enriching combination of techniques called Soft Computing", concludes the expert.

Interview with Segio Ardanza-Trevijano, director of the course "Physics and Mathematics for everyday life", in 98.3 Radio: