A.I Genesis: Move 37
In the AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol Go match series, AlphaGo won 4 out of 5 games. In Game 2, AlphaGo made a move at Move 37, an unusual move that shocked Go experts across the world. Lee took 15 minutes to respond. He even left the room for a few minutes. Move 37 was a move that no human would have ever considered because it had a one in ten thousand chance. Move 37 has forever redefined the future.
Since Move 37, let us look at the impact of A.I across various domains.
Mining company Rio Tinto in Australia is providing a glimpse into the future by deploying self-driving trucks in their field. BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, Suncor, Canada’s largest oil company, have also begun testing self-driving trucks.
A.I versus M.D is a stunning essay from Siddhartha Mukherjee that takes a peak at the intersection of Medicine and A.I. It will be a win-win if deep learning algorithms can help doctors with diagnosis.
BlackRock, the largest fund company in the world, is shifting away from actively managed mutual funds and is starting to rely more on algorithms to pick stocks. It is not a coincidence that BlackRock is cutting 400 jobs in it’s stock picking units.
In Artificial Intelligence: Implications on Marketing, Analytics and You, Avinash Kaushik makes the A.I topic very accessible using Google Photos as the example. Definitely try his examples with your phone if you use Google Photos. He goes into various use cases such as creating perfect email campaigns, increasing conversion rates using Machine Learning.
As A.I starts shifting both blue-collar and white-collar jobs, what can we do to stay relevant. The answer lies in the ‘Productivity and Prosperity’ section of Berkshire Hathaway’s 2015 letter to shareholders.
In 1900, America’s civilian work force numbered 28 million. Of these, 11 million, a staggering 40% of the total, worked in farming. The leading crop then, as now, was corn. About 90 million acres were devoted to its production and the yield per acre was 30 bushels, for a total output of 2.7 billion bushels annually.
Then came the tractor and one innovation after another that revolutionized such keys to farm productivity as planting, harvesting, irrigation, fertilization and seed quality. Today, we devote about 85 million acres to corn. Productivity, however, has improved yields to more than 150 bushels per acre, for an annual output of 13–14 billion bushels. Farmers have made similar gains with other products.
Increased yields, though, are only half the story: The huge increases in physical output have been accompanied by a dramatic reduction in the number of farm laborers (“human input”). Today about three million people work on farms, a tiny 2% of our 158-million-person work force. Thus, improved farming methods have allowed tens of millions of present-day workers to utilize their time and talents in other endeavors, a reallocation of human resources that enables Americans of today to enjoy huge quantities of non-farm goods and services they would otherwise lack.
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The answer in such disruptions is not the restraining or outlawing of actions that increase productivity. Americans would not be living nearly as well as we do if we had mandated that 11 million people should forever be employed in farming.
For now, I’ll leave you with two videos for inspiration. First is a short clip from Steve Jobs, in which he talks about humans as tool builders. Second is a TED talk by Maurice Conti taking us through a journey of incredible inventions of intuitive AI.
