Artificial Intelligence: The Robots are coming

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Technological revolutions arrive fleetingly. We had giant wireless phones in the beginning and from there we transitioned to everyone having a smartphone in the span of a few years. Social media seemed like a gimmick for the young generation at first, until everyone was on social media.Now Artificial Intelligence is slowly becoming commonplace, and soon we will be in a society governed through artificial intelligence.The research firm Gartner reaffirmed this when they highlighted Artificial Intelligence as the key strategic prediction of 2016.

The rise of Artificial Intelligence is becoming a reality thanks to the developments in computer sciences and neurology. Companies like Google are trying to emulate the way the human brain works in order to create intelligences that can pass the Turing test. Neural networks are being studied to learn how thought is created in the brain and what fuels creativity. An example of this is Google’s Deep Dream projects, which is trying to emulate the way we recognise objects based on visual stimuli.

What is even more interesting is how much automation already exists in the market. Stock markets have had high frequency trades for many years now. These trades are done without any human intervention, purely based on data and predictions done by computers. The implications of Artificial Intelligence affects every part of our lives, but there are a few causations we can already see.

Created Content

We already have books for sale on Amazon that have been completely compiled by software algorithms. As the capabilities of artificial intelligence increase, it is becoming more common in content creation. The impact right now is much more on non-creative writing such as reports, researches, simple news articles, and white papers, but we will slowly see the growth of Artificial Intelligence in creative writing as well.

We have not reached the point in Artificial Intelligence where they can create art, but we will soon. It is sure to open new conversation about what art means, and whether art can be created by machines or are they expressly human things.

Artificial Interactions

The Internet of Things has been in focus for many years now, but it is now being combined with Artificial Intelligence to create unparalleled customer experiences.We can expect our appliances to talk to each other and work together to run our homes, for business machines to anticipate workloads and increase capacity, and much more.

A.I. as a Manager

If you think your current manager is not emotionally open, just wait till they are replaced by a software algorithm. Artificial Intelligence is already playing a huge role in the leading companies of the world, helping with employee scheduling and other human resource tasks. For tasks that have clearly defined KPIs, companies are practicing with giving management over to Artificial Intelligence.

There are many advantages to working under an Artificial Intelligence. The most basic is the lack of stress; people know that if they make mistakes the A.I. will not be angry or disappointed at them. There is also a fear though that the A.I. manager cannot be reasoned with, and things which human managers were flexible about will no longer be possible.

An Automated Workplace

We already went through a phase where humans were replaced by machines in the workplace for many tasks, and with the advent of Artificial Intelligence the number of tasks that machines can do better than human beings will only grow. We already have a few completely automated factories operating around the world. In these factories the only human beings present are the ones monitoring the operations; their job is just to ensure that nothing goes wrong.

While this creates exciting new frontiers for manufacturers, it has also been the source of a lot of stress for people with such jobs. Company owners are ecstatic that they will be able to accomplish more with machines, which do not fatigue and do not make errors the way humans do, but this is going to cause us serious problems on a global scale. We have to ask ourselves what a post employment world will look like. If machines can do everything, socio-political questions arise such as; why would human beings be needed for any jobs? If we eliminate too many jobs, who will there be to purchase the items being produced?

These are the questions that economists are already working on. There is a popular way of thinking that suggests that 0% employment is not something to fear, it is the actual goal of work automation. If we automate things, then we will not need to do jobs to earn money since the only reason we needed the jobs in the first place was to do work that needed to be done. We cannot be sure about how this will play out, but what we are sure about is that the future workplace will be a very different environment.

Holistic Healthcare

We already have gadgets that can monitor the health of patients and communicate them to medical professionals. In the future, we will all be wearing such gadgets that will be continuously monitoring our health and helping us make healthier choices. We will also be able to detect any alarming signs, such as a stroke, and the gadgets will automatically alert hospitals and ambulances. Our medical records will also be analysed automatically and suggestions given to improve our health.

A Helping Hand in the Hand

Technologies like Siri and Cortana are already available to the public; they emulate human interaction to make our interactions with machines seamless. They are still very primitive examples of artificial intelligence in the grand scheme of things; but they can answer our questions and do some basic tasks for us. In the future they will be able to anticipate our needs and hold conversations with us.

A.I. as the Boogeyman

Artificial Intelligence has often been portrayed as the enemy in science fiction. It seems it is one of humanity’s fears that we will create intelligence greater than our own and it will turn on us. In reality, Artificial Intelligence is very different. It isn’t one mind controlling everything; it is small algorithms working together as a cohesive whole.It is not wise to think that artificial intelligence will behave in any way like humans do and be susceptible to emotions.

What is worrying however is that people like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking are somewhat concerned about artificial technology. Nevertheless, they realise that Artificial Intelligence is inevitable and shouldn’t be halted; instead, the focus should be on creating guidelines and doing research that will help us ensure that artificial intelligences are made safe.

Where do we go now?

The most exciting thing about artificial intelligence is that we have no way to predict how things will go. The whole point of creating Artificial Intelligence is to create an entity that can think something better than us; thus, we cannot possible predict the complete ramifications of A.I. What is needed, is a smooth transition from our current way of working, to working WITH artificial intelligence in a way which keeps all the stakeholders involved.

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