Imagination for Technological Development

Altınbaş University Faculty of Architecture and Engineering 100th Anniversary of the Republic Conference was held at Mahmutbey campus.

Altınbaş University Vice Rector Prof. Dr. Ali Argun Karacabey, who made the opening speech of the conference, said that understanding the changes in technology and following their effects on our lives has become a challenging endeavor. Prof. Dr. Karacabey said, "As a social scientist, I think we should thank all engineers around the world for their contributions to this development. The ability of engineers to design and change the future has become more important than ever before in the history of the world."

Reminding Einstein's quote "Imagination is more important than knowledge", Prof. Dr. Karacabey stated that designing and changing the future first starts with imagination. In this context, Prof. Dr. Karacabey referred to John Elfreth Watkins, an engineer who lived in the 19th century, and said, "It was not his engineering skills that made us remember him years later. In his article published in the Ladies Home Journal in 1900, Watkins described what the world would be like 100 years later. He gave us the news 100 years in advance that photographs could be sent by telegraph from any distance. 100 years later, he wrote that if there was a war in China, snapshots of the most striking events would be published in newspapers an hour later. This is very familiar to us today, isn't it?"

Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture Prof. Dr. Galip Cansever also mentioned that the last stop in the history of economic production models of societies is the fourth industrial revolution. Stating that industrial digitalization will form the basis of the smart production process of the future, Cansever said that not long after 4-5 years, approximately 50 billion devices working in the world's industrial units will be in communication with each other over the internet.

Prof. Dr. Cansever said, "Smart city, home, logistics, network and smart production systems formed by devices will merge with social networks and e-commerce networks. The ecosystem network that services, objects and individuals will establish using the internet environment will affect approximately 50 percent of the global trade volume in the next 25 years." Prof. Dr. Cansever stated that the rapidly increasing digitalization in industry will require the use of approximately 3 million robots, which can easily communicate with each other and with a center.

Prof. Dr. Cansever also made suggestions to businesses that want to be ahead in global competition, saying, "The organizational structures of companies should be adapted to these processes. The human factor is still very important, but staff need to improve their skills. As smart robots to work in production and distribution processes increase and artificial intelligence systems to be used in R&D, sales, marketing and management processes develop, they must have the skills to ensure that they work in harmony with each other. In particular, it is inevitable to establish teams consisting of designers, software developers and implementing experts who will work with a team spirit."

Artificial intelligence studies, which set out from the human desire to make thinking machines, are discussed in many aspects, especially ethics. While discussions continue on the one hand, artificial intelligence continues to develop on the other. Altınbaş University Faculty of Applied Sciences Management Information Systems Dr. Lecturer. Prof. İncilay Yıldız also made evaluations in this field.

Prof. Dr. İncilay Yıldız drew attention to the similarities of biological nerve cells and artificial neural networks by comparing the artificial learning process to the human learning process. Yıldız said, "Artificial intelligence can be defined as the simulation of intelligence in machines programmed to think and learn like humans. We can say that it is designed to perform tasks that require human intelligence. Examples of these include the ability of machines or algorithms to perform visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making and language translation." Stating that these concepts can be better understood by looking at their equivalents in daily life, Yıldız continued his speech with examples:

"Machine learning studies are used in areas such as prediction, classification, data association, data interpretation and data filtering. In other words, we can give the example of predicting the future price of a product for prediction. For classification, we can talk about processes such as determining customer segmentation, completing a missing picture for data association, handwriting or signature recognition for data interpretation, and dimension reduction and attribute selection for data filtering, which aims to select the appropriate inputs for the best result."

Prof. Dr. Lecturer. Prof. Dr. İncilay Yıldız stated that developments have accelerated with Generative AI in the field of generative artificial intelligence, which enables computer systems to create original content by processing different types of data such as text, image, sound, along with deep learning, and cited technologies such as GPT-4 and DALL-E as examples.