Day by day, Artificial Intelligence (AI) keeps getting more powerful, smarter, and imbedded in our daily lives. Last week I was in Amsterdam visiting the World Summit AI 2018, and got the chance to listen to fascinating companies, from Toyota to small companies, present their ideas and aims for a future with AI. Something that struck me is that in the past it has seemed as if AI was being developed to, and would, replace humans – however the speakers there focused on our future with AI not AI’s future. Emphasis was strongly placed on the fact that the aim was to train and produce AI that would not necessarily replace humans but increase safety far more for humans during their lives. As well as to allow us to focus on creative problem solving and not being swamped by the immense amount of tasks and information surrounding us on a daily basis.
This not only shows a shift away from fully replacing humans with machines – in my opinion a very positive shift – but also that the disruptive potential of AI is getting stronger. If as a consumer or employee you feel threatened by AI or deem it as not adding value to your life, you are more likely to resist its implementation. However, with this shift, more value is added to consumers and employees. For employees – and firms – it hopefully means that instead of implementing AI to merely cut costs and increase margins, AI will be implemented to reduce costs whilst boosting employee safety and productivity. For consumers, this shift will hopefully mean less information overload, by having helpful AIs handle the immense amounts of tasks and information we face on a daily basis (Accenture showed a very interesting – but still debatable due to privacy issues – solution [1]).
Nonetheless, time will show if AI truly enriches our lives, or will actually come to replace us. But I do like to think that the former will be the case; in the end the steam engine did not replace the human, it made the human more productive and efficient.
Also, on a quick end note, I can only highly recommend joining the World Summit AI whenever you get the chance to!
Endnotes
[1] Short video posted by Accenture about the solution: https://twitter.com/AccentureNL/status/1050729387182698497
