AI — What does the future hold?
According to Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach published in 2003 by Russel and Norvig, AI is any device that is able to perceive its surroundings and respond to them while maximizing its chance to perform it successfully. Despite being 15 years old, the definition didn’t change much. Other researchers and scientists only added two additional criteria for AI: possessing some knowledge and the ability to learn.
Tech experts claim that AI has the potential to transform the world. The AI’s true potential is already a topic of many discussions. Will it transform the world into a carefree utopia where humankind will be able live the life to the fullest? Or will it transform the world into a postnuclear wasteland filled with killer robots hell-bent on the destruction of fleshlings?
Unfortunately, there’s still no consensus among the said experts about the polarity of that potential. I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.
According to experts from futureoflife.org, an institute that gathers worlds leading experts to research AI’s impact on society, AI that will be able to outsmart humans in more that one narrow area of expertise (for example, beating someone in a round of Starcraft) is still decades away. Now that we defined what AI is (and that it won’t enslave us anytime soon), let’s talk about AI in everyday life.
AI in everyday life!
Since AI is only able (for now) to focus on one narrow area of expertise, there’s a multitude of different AI technologies that currently help us get through the day. Digital assistants like Siri and Alexa are both powered by AI and they utilize other AIs to perform their tasks. For example, you notice you’re running out of gas and you call Siri for help. When you ask Siri to find the nearest gas station, the first AI recognizes your voice and decodes what you want it to do.
Then it uses search algorithms which also use AI principles to find the gas station meeting your requirements. Lastly, Siri conveys the found information to you and plots a course for you to follow. By using different AIs digital assistants make our life easier by enabling us to multitask and focus on the task we’re doing. However, this example might already be dated due to another AI-powered technology that’s rapidly evolving — self-driving cars.
Cars with autonomous features are already available on the market. Most modern cars come with pedestrian tracking technology to prevent accidents and lane assistance which helps you keep your car between the lines. Car manufacturers like Tesla include basic autonomous driving software in their vehicles with additional features already in development.
You still need to be prepared to take over driving since the technology is far from perfect. And it’s still in a legal grey area with only a few states in the world working on clearly defining the legal framework. Nevertheless, experts say that AI, using deep learning and sensor fusion along with some hefty onboard computing with neural network processing, will be able to outperform human drivers in all conditions by a serious margin.
With cars being driven by AI you could enjoy your commute to work by continuing to sleep or by starting your work earlier during the commute.
According to McKinsey, those activities that automation could replace account for 51% of the American economy with $2.7 trillion in wages.
AI could also be used to automate activities in various industries on a global scale. Automating activities could change daily work activities for everyone from physical workers to CEOs. It can increase productivity, reduce the number of errors, reduce margins of errors in production and overall achieving results beyond human abilities.
There is a darker (for humans, not AI overlords) side to automation. According to McKinsey, those activities that automation could replace account for 51% of the American economy with $2.7 trillion in wages. If we want AI and automation to replace those jobs, our entire social, politic and economic system would have to change from the ground up. Some countries, like Finland, are already experimenting with universal basic income to tackle some of the issues automation would bring.
To sum it all up
We only scratched the surface of AIs potential. From shopping assistants to online customer support, the AIs potential is limitless. To sum it all up, I’ll quote Google co-founder Larry Bird and his comment on AI: “ Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google. The ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing. We’re nowhere near doing that now. However, we can get incrementally closer to that, and that is basically what we work on.”.
