Artificial Intelligence: Mankind’s Future
AI is not something new to us anymore but the topic to discuss upon is, are we seeing a “AI Revolution” about to take off?
Any literate person, active on the Internet should be well aware about Amazon’s new virtual assistant, Alexa, making the rounds here. Bundled with utilitarian skill sets, Alexa can be very useful in our day-to-day life, want to schedule a meeting? Alexa can do that for you while you are pre-occupied with someother work. Apart from that the most appealing feature of the virtual assistant is it’s ability to seamlessly connect to various wireless appliances at your home. In other words, control your TV or the wireless music system right from your Android or iOS device. Amazing right?
Looking down history, Artificial Intelligence has been in existence for decades now but the level of innovation in this field in recent years is mind boggling! Expanding at light-speed, the field of Artificial Intelligence has taken over the healthcare sector, autonomous automobiles, financial security, etc, just to name among a few. If the present trend continues, one can expect a steep rise in the unemployement, since AI would most probably replace the high-skilled labour required for precise computational inputs. But looking at the bright side AI can ease our lifestyle as well rather than bring about an apocalyptic end for the human race. For instance, AI could be effectively integrated into autonomous delivery system that can exponentially improve seller-customer relations, according to a Amazon report. The other example is the driverless automobiles that’s being developed by Tesla. Precise, laser-guided autonomous driving can literally eliminate the plague of accidents on the road caused due to distractions.

Talking about the propect of AI, it seems promising and fruitful but the truth is each and every achievements in the field of AI has been the result of decades of research on machine learning and advanced computation. Over all these years, as computational capabilities increased manifold and cloud-based computing became readily available to the public, it opened up new doors for researchers to simulate and better understand the human brain activity. This was mainly done through constructing artificial neural networks over the cloud and harnessing the computational capabilities of your home PC. The results of which could be used to ultimately train future computers to recognise sound, patters, images, texts, and so on.
Coming back to the topic, AI could be the big thing after the Industrial Revolution and could possibly change everything the way how the Industrial Revolution affected mankind’s future!
With some massive state-of-the-art technology in the hands a few major producers like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Baidu, and keeping in mind how much of their revenue turnover is being put back into R&D, it won’t be long since Artificial Intelligence is integrated in every aspect of our lives. Until then let’s hope that AI would be a blessing to mankind rather than being a nuisance that could potentially wipe off any human existence from the face of Earth.