All you have to do is see.
“For the past 50+ years, AI’s progress was mainly limited by our inability to create faster computers, as well as coming up with a natural way for us to interact with them.” — Jennifer Sukis, Design Principle, IBM (AI Today, Medium).
After the “Mother of all demos”, by Douglas Englebart in 1968, technology has been evolving at an exponential speed. To consider what problems AI would solve in the next century, one cannot ignore the tools human would be equipped with in their quest for utopia.
Although smart contact lenses might sound a thing of science fiction, with the research going on in smart contact lenses, bio-integrated miniature circuits, and brain-computer interfaces, a century seems enough to turn that fiction into reality. With cloud-based AI-powered AR smart lenses (too much tech?), humans would see the world differently. Information about the context would be as spontaneous as the context itself. You are hiking through a forest, and all the details are pulled up about the fruit you just found. You feel relieved you got to know its poisonous before you ate it. Who is that guy at the party you remember to have seen before? Pull up his Facebook profile while you talk to him. The road signs in any country translated into your language. You never need a laptop again, because every surface is a digital touchscreen device.
This would overtake many of the digital devices like phones we use today. Apps would be made for the contact lenses. You can download Snapchat filter to augment the real world, play Mario while you go for a jog, or swipe on people as you see them by downloading Tinder on your contact lenses.
All these applications, but for contact lenses. Doesn't seem bad at all.
With such hardware advancement, many challenges faced by AI technology today would be overcome. Training data would potentially be available from smart lenses of all the human population. Need to develop an AI for farming? Incentivize farmers to share their view and use as training data. (It would have already been there by the time this technology comes out, though).
Cities might also change drastically, resembling a giant version of monochromatic architectural models, because who needs permanent banners, hoardings or posters when you can project it on the lenses of onlookers. Human job profiles would change drastically too, because would you need a mechanic, or a chef, or even a doctor, in the age of AI and information abundance. With no missing pieces of information, everything that can be broken down to numbers, or even not, could be delegated to AI.
AI would solve everything (that's where all the bets are placed, right), but having set the context for the future, two major problems that would benefit mankind greatly, if solved, are:
Idea 1: Unlock the Body
- The problem or opportunity this idea solves for
After breaking down DNA to its constituents, editing some genes, and adding stem cells to the mix, can the idea of the regenerative human body made a reality? Not that humans would be faced with dangerous tasks, but a regenerative body gives the hope of a disease-less, amputee-less world, if not of curing old age.
- who your users would be
Humans. Animals. Pets.
- what they would love about it
Any living being would not be restricted by physical limitations in achieving what it desires. (Superhumans 1/2)
- what the challenges in creating it will be from an ethics standpoint
If we have something to learn from history, it is that access to innovation and resources is seldom universal. If enhancement plays out in a similar fashion, how would the definition of average human traits change, and what advantage would the elite have over the have-nots?
Idea 2: Unlock the Mind
- The problem or opportunity this idea solves for
Extrasensory perception is a topic that eludes humans till yet. Since AI would help understand the nature of the physical world better, after breaking down everything into its constituents, can humans aim to unlock the full potential of the mind, provided it exists. If not unlock, can they evolve it to wield ESP, telekinesis, second sight, and powers that are mystical but too good to be true?
- who your users would be
Humans.
- what they would love about it
AI, even with singularity would be as tame to humans as mobile phones right now. (Superhumans 2/2)
- what the challenges in creating it will be from an ethics standpoint
“improvements in cognitive capacities could have instrumental and intrinsic value that is far greater than that of improved physical capacities. Being able to think better would equip us to solve important political and social problems, make scientific breakthroughs, and so on;” — Bostrom, N. Roache, R (Ethical issues in human enhancement, 2007)
A scenario where inequality creeps in the distribution of such technology would lead to the creation of societies where segregation is not based on economics, caste, or religion, but on superhumans and humans. (X-men, anyone?)
The only problem that we might not be able to solve, and can be the real test for AI is “The god within, or the god without ?”
