Where Is Artificial Intelligence Going?
We enjoy talk to text and fraud prevention, but what happens when artificial intelligence hits the big leagues?
From dystopian science fiction stories to enthusiastic marketing presentations, artificial intelligence has been a popular topic for decades. Yet in recent years, it has crept into our lives almost unnoticed. This includes technology from Siri and Google, to self-driving cars and fraud prevention monitoring. Artificial Intelligence (AI) doesn’t always involve robots pretending to be people, but it does pose questions about the role and purpose of people in society.
Employing Machine Thinking
Artificial intelligence is generally defined as machines being able to function in ways befitting of a human. But why stop there? A surgeon’s hand will never be as steady as a robot arm, and nobody could collate webpage results like a search engine – remembering that some early search engines were programmed manually before Google’s all-conquering algorithms arrived. Machine learning is increasingly enabling these algorithms to outthink and outperform us, which poses the question of where AI might ultimately be headed.
Merge Ahead
The general consensus among industry experts is that AI won’t have a single groundbreaking moment that catapults it into view. Instead, it will continue to entwine itself with modern life, from increasingly autonomous vehicles to automated customer service systems. These are already with us in the form of chatbots, pre-programmed to resolve certain queries while requesting human assistance if necessary. This need for intervention will decrease over time, as the algorithms responsible for chatbots become able to resolve more enquiries themselves.
Cloud Powered Ease And Assistance
In some quarters there appears to be an unspoken trend of underplaying AI’s very existence. Spotify and Netflix subscribers might not realize that AI governs their curated recommendations, in the same way Cortana and Alexa feature reassuringly human voices. From satellite navigation systems to smart home electronics, AI’s various incarnations are either designed to resemble a person or presented as a simple triumph of cloud-hosted computing power – which is certainly true. Google Translate is perhaps the ultimate example of an AI service that’s constantly learning and improving, advancing the boundaries of machine learning with every translation.
Comments? Concerns?
Google Translate may eventually start to put translators out of a job as it becomes more dependable, which raises an ethical issue about whether artificial intelligence could ultimately make our lives harder instead of easier. However, that depends on your perspective. By eliminating basic tasks we are then freed up to be more creative.In terms of translation it will take some time for AI to really understand the subtleties of language translation.
Computers could do a far better job of managing our safety than humans, but computerized air traffic control and rail signalling would result in many specialized employees being made redundant. Robots are already replacing factory workers around the world, and AI is even mechanizing previously judgement-based jobs like quality assurance. Many individual roles could be done more efficiently and effectively by an algorithm, but that might not be an optimal outcome for society as a whole. What is needed is a different way of human thinking to deal with these change.
Together, Not Divided
Some technology experts are predicting that man and machine will stop competing, and start to merge. Brain implants could transform our cognitive and memory skills, while robotic limbs and sensors would restore mobility and improve existing sensory abilities. Imagine Google Glass, but embedded in your eyes rather than worn over it. And while that sounds like the stuff of science fiction, sci-fi predicted mobile phones, military drones and driverless cars decades before they were first invented. Can we really be sure today’s sci-fi won’t become tomorrow’s reality? It’s done so in the past, so watch this space.