An Idiot’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence
The What-Ifs, Maybes, and Where We are Going
Our world is changing. Our world is changing and I didn’t even realize it, at least to the depth that it is happening. I guess you can say I have a pretty naïve understanding of technology and how it is transforming our society. For a 24-year-old, I pretty much know and understand the basics — how to operate Apple and Android devices, computers and their accessories, Bluetooth functions in my car, and an overhead projector in my classroom (Yup! I’m a 4th grade teacher!). That’s about it. Sure, I can figure things out as they are given to me. I mean, I was a child of the 90s. My generation was virtually the guinea pigs of the start of the technology boom. But to tell me that devices incorporating Artificial Intelligence will soon be coming into my home and transforming my life, my daily activities, the way I think, I have a hard time wrapping my head around that and adapting my world view.
A week ago if you would have mentioned Artificial Intelligence, I would have said, “Oh, the Steven Spielberg movie with Haley Joel Osment that I saw when I was a kid!” Even better, if you said A.I. I would have very easily thought you were talking about an NBA player. I told you I am naïve, and clearly my brain is quickly magnetized to our world of entertainment and the media. It’s not that I don’t care about tracking these new trends, or that there is a lack of information for the public. Right now, do a Google search on Artificial Intelligence… you’ll be amazed at the results. I would just say that at the moment, one of my highest priorities is not staying up-to-date with the latest technological trends, making me quite ill-informed in the area. After this week, I now know this is something I need to work on.
Lucky for me, I just began my first two classes within my Teaching, Learning, and Technology Masters Degree at Lehigh University, and my knowledge and perception of technology have very quickly been brought up to present-day, and I find myself looking more towards the future than ever before. What have I discovered in one week? As Peter Diamandis puts it in his book Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think, we are in the midst of some major disruptive changes in our society, destroying our current state of industry that we have all grown to know and love, making us feel uncomfortable about the deep-seated changes ahead. Technology has taken our world by storm, and it is growing exponentially, meaning that it is coming at us at full-speed whether we are ready or not. The rules are changing, and again I say it… it is making us feel uncomfortable.
But, uncomfortable how? I’ll use my fiancé, Justin, as an example to illustrate this. Justin works in a production plant for a very popular tractor trailer company. I have never seen the plant in action, but from what I have heard him talk about, I can visualize the huge plant as an assembly line, with different people operating different parts of the line, each with one singular task ultimately leading to the construction of a massive vessel. In theory, we know from experience that this method works. The world has adopted this type of production method since the days of Ford’s Model T.
But, with an economy in the United States that continues to spiral into decline, jobs are being cut at Justin’s plant alongside millions of jobs in other industries throughout the world. How does the work force respond? The current solution is to lay off employees and overwork those who are left, giving the jobs that belonged to three people to one person. It’s completely unmanageable and unsafe. The solution that I soon see coming into fruition is the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence to fill in these gaps and make labor faster, more efficient, and cost-effective. This is actually happening already in places throughout the world that are ahead of their time, like Amazon, for example! Think about it… you don’t have to pay a robot to do the work of a human. Sure it would be costly at first, but as advances in A.I. and Robotics are made, just like the cost of our cell phones and tablets, prices will become less and less over time, providing companies with immense returns in their investments in the form of faster, more effective production. It’s the perfect picture… humans working alongside artificial beings. Or is it?
What happens when someone realizes that this is so incredibly effective that the human worker becomes obsolete? We don’t need Justin, or any other he or she for that matter to complete the work because we have an it to do it. This brings us back to Diamandis’ idea of disruption. Our entire blue-color work force is transformed, and suddenly we are at a loss for what we are to do with our meek human-level performance. I’m uncomfortable, Justin is uncomfortable, and you too should be uncomfortable.
Like I mentioned earlier, I am a 4th grade teacher. Just like my fiancé, I too have reason to be uncomfortable thinking about the future of my profession. Up to a few days ago, I only thought I needed to be concerned by a lack of funding from the Department of Education leading to budget cuts and job furloughs throughout the state of Pennsylvania. But, low and behold, I too have Artificial Intelligence to worry about disrupting my career and the entire structure of education in the United States, and even the world!
Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google’s Parent company, Alphabet, puts it simply in his list of “The 6 Most Important Tech Trends”. At the very bottom of his list, Schmidt predicts that in the near future, technology is going to be what transforms and saves our out-dated and failing education system here in America. It’s not the teachers that are going to make a difference, no matter how innovative you may be. It’s the technology that is going to come in on a white horse and save the day. For now, it seems harmless. Teachers are learning to work closely with technology in their classrooms, but it isn’t making much of a difference. There are too many pieces missing that are not making it as successful as it could be.
In my own teaching experience, I have started to see a greater influx of devices in classrooms, but with very little professional development for teachers on how to instruct through the device. Sure, it is great for each student to have technology in their hands, but it is ultimately being used to supplement content, not teach it. The icing on the cake is that we are working upon a digital divide, meaning that technology is not necessarily being used in all facets of a child’s life, pulling us down even more. They may have plenty of technology to use while at school, but when they go home they have nothing, leaving them unable to explore and learn in the same way as they did inside their classroom walls.
So where does Artificial Intelligence come into all of this and ultimately disrupt the careers of teachers throughout the nation? Advances in technology are going to become so great, that before you know it teachers will be replaced by Artificial Intelligence. Why send your child to school to sit among a classroom of 19 other students when you can have an A.I. in your home that has multitudes of knowledge beyond a human teacher, and can work 1-on-1 to provide personalized instruction to the learner? Imagine an A.I. teacher that can identify student misconceptions in learning before they even happen and answer all questions of inquiry in a split-second. Schmidt argues that, “computers can help change education so that it’s the most efficient and effective for everyone “. Our computers are evolving, and the devices we have spent so much time learning to use within our classrooms will be quickly replaced by an A.I. that can do so much more than a teacher could have done simply by integrating an iPad into instruction. This is where our education system is going, and I predict that it will be the incredibly effective solution that we have been searching for.
Clearly, I have a mixed-bag of emotions on this idea of Artificial Intelligence disrupting my life. I have had only a few days to chew, swallow, and digest these concepts, so excuse my inability to formulate how I truly feel about these advances. Let’s step back from my hypothetical-what-if-mentality, and look at where the research really sees this going in the years ahead.
In the short-term, we can look to how Artificial Intelligence will replace our smartphones. Can you even imagine having a different device in place of your iPhone with even more capabilities than you already have? Last December, the Ericsson ConsumerLab conducted a survey among 5,000 smartphone users in 9 countries. Results from the survey concluded that users find our hand-held devices to be impractical and inconvenient due to battery capacities and lack of wearability. One in two users predicted that smartphones will be a thing of the past in the next five years, and that they will be replaced by Artificial Intelligence. Say good-bye to the days of pressing a button to talk to Siri or staring into your screen to check your Instagram or email. A.I. will disrupt our smartphones, turning our once top-of-the-line iPhone into an antique, and eliminating some of the largest brands in the world completely.
Looking further into the future, we can think about the predictions about Artificial Intelligence made by Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil, author of 7 books and recipient of 20 honorary doctorates, has a great deal of expertise in this futuristic thinking. In the past 25 years, he has made predictions about advances in technology and has been right in much of his thinking! Bill Gates has called him the best person at predicting the future of Artificial Intelligence. Where does he see this going? He has predicted that by the 2040s, non-biological intelligence will be a billion times more capable than biological intelligence (taking us right back to my theory on how teachers will be replaced by the much, much smarter A.I.s). By 2045, he thinks that we will multiply our own intelligence a billionfold by linking wirelessly from our neocortex to a synthetic neocortex in the cloud. Is this the answer to making sure that humans do not become over-powered by A.I. and robots… implants in the brain? It sounds like a book or an academic degree just won’t be enough to make a human informationally useful by 2045.
Like I said to start, our world is changing. Whether we are ready for it or not the Terminator and Iron Man technologies that have been illustrated by Hollywood are upon us. Will our world be like what we have seen on the big screen? Will the robots take over our world and make us the “pets” in their homes? Will we all be medically transitioned into a hybrid human-robot that can live forever? That’s the beauty of the future before us… it’s a mystery. But take it from me, the naïve one… the best thing we can do to be prepared for what is to come is to stay informed and hold onto our seats during the bumpy ride. It is certain to disrupt and confuse our lives, but we have been living among the ruckus for decades. Go back 100 years and I’m sure they would have never imagined that we would be where we are today… and we have made it here just fine.