Artificial Intelligence: Hype? Or Change Agent to shape future?

Kamal Pathak
Sep 5, 2018 · 4 min read
Photo Credit: Seattle Chinese Times

It was a time when a computer weighed over 30 tons, occupied 1800 square feet space, and used 18,000 vacuum tubes & 200 kilowatts of electricity, all of this to give humanity an ability to compute 5000 additions, 357 multiplications, and 38 divisions in a second. No RAM and no storage by the way.

I am not biased, ENIAC was the supercomputer of the day. But what I wonder even more is, from that monster size of a computer to a recently launched Intel Movidius, a thumb size drive, with abilities to think like humans, and another, an 8.8 mm wide chip that can power unmanned air drones that can follow their master, understand depth, avoid obstacles, and orient themselves in space, all on their own, science has made mountainous progress.

In the past few years, there have been a myriad technologies boasting about bringing disruption, but the one that is actually doing it in our daily lives, and remains the favourite horse of the highest bidders is Artificial Intelligence, or AI. So, all I wanted to do was write a little something on AI.

What is AI?

Artificial Intelligence is the ability of machines to see, think, learn, and act like genius humans. It isn’t debatable that the machines are faster, more efficient, and more reliable. AI today can recognise faces, converse with humans, identify objects in an image, authenticate users based on voice, predict a suspicious activity at a crowded public place, and what not. And guess what? All of it is possible at a speed and scale one can hardly fathom.

Photo Credit: Pexels

As per a study, AI is expected to reach market worth $190 billion by 2025 (MarketsandMarkets), deriving business value of over $3.9 trillion by 2022 (Gartner). It is no surprise that there are countless startups and Fortune 500 companies that are determined to get the most from AI.

How does AI work?

In a very simple language, there’s a computer behind AI. Big or small. It first understands a situation through sensors or human input. For instance, if you want to train a computer to auto-detect a cat, you will have to show lots of cats to it. After this, the computer processes the information and tries to predict the results next time. The humans/ engineers who train this computer or the computer itself then reiterate a lot of information until desired accuracy of results is reached. Though the entire process is not as simple as it sounds, just know that more the amount of training information, better the results. Which means, you may need 100K cat images to reach 80% accuracy.

Some Use Cases:

AI is being continuously used around us. Few examples you may be able to relate are:

  1. Virtual Digital Assistants — Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant
  2. ‘Frequently Bought Together’ suggestions on Amazon
  3. Self-drive cars
  4. Chatbots
  5. Emotion Recognition to understand customer emotions
  6. Automated Customer Footfall Counting in retail stores

These are just few use cases many would hear about frequently. But AI spans beyond these, and go all over to pregnancy management, human gene analytics, smart security systems, cashier-less checkouts, predictive airplane engine maintenance, and much more.

Who should pay attention?

Photo Credit: Pexels

Everyone. AI will have an impact on virtually every industry, when some are to be impacted immediately, and others to follow eventually. Healthcare, automotive, retail, agriculture, customer service, manufacturing, everyone. Every department — from HR, Operations, Marketing, Sales, and what not. No matter who you are, it is going to be a part of your life tomorrow, and will make today’s technologies obsolete, like mobile phones did with the landline phones in the past.

What will happen?

AI is said to take away a lot of jobs. In my opinion, it will not. But one thing it will certainly do in this aspect is, it will shake people, and shake them well. It will force them to go out of their comfort zones, learn new skills, and do the most difficult thing — Accept CHANGE. Just remember the days when computer entered our lives. Everyone had the same fear. But, they created more jobs. However, it took an entire generation of people to go after learning computers, as if their lives depended on it. The same holds true today.

We’re living in such exciting times, a kissing distance away from a big bright future. Let’s make the best of it.

Data Driven Investor

Kamal Pathak

Written by

A HAPPY pack of STARDUST with high affinity for everything beautiful- rainbows, unicorns, life, leadership, modern tech. Learner’s license to writing :)

Data Driven Investor

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