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Speech recognition, facial recognition, computers beating humans at games, recognise planets in space and holding an interview during a press conference. This is just a small list of the things AI’s are capable of at this very moment. But what will AI’s be able to do in the future? And more importantly, how will we enable AI to reach its full potential?

The overall research on AI has increased significantly since 2012 with almost 45.000 papers submitted to Arxiv Sanity Preserver, a browser to access the papers (Turck, 2018). The Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems had a handful attendees in the 90s and 8.000 in 2017 (Zhang, 2018). Worldwide investment in AI will top 200$ billion in 2025 according to KPMG (Moore, 2018).

All these increases have enabled AI’s to help in well-known business processes. However some people still see some dark aspects of AI and question themselves if AI will takeover the workforce and some might even be afraid of AI. However, as most people do not know, AI is also here to make a social impact. Whether it is to reduce emission output, help hire and train the under privileged or help immigrants in the complex legal landscape (Forbes). AI is ready to even more, did you ever think about the idea that AI will help blind or deaf people to recognize danger or just to help with the every day life?

However to enhance the current knowledge of AI and enable a further growth, just putting billions of dollars into research might help but will not be enough. There needs to be a worldwide consensus and embracement of AI in order to reach its full potential (Turck, 2018). I believe that if we look at the social impact AI can make in all different kind of industries and social works, we will progress further as humanity as a whole.

 

 

References:

Turck, Matt (2018) Frontier AI: How far are we from artificial intelligence really? [Online] Hackernoon. Available at: https://hackernoon.com/frontier-ai-how-far-are-we-from-artificial-general-intelligence-really-5b13b1ebcd4e [Accessed 16-10-18]

Zhang, Chain (2017) A statistical tour of NIPS. [Online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/syncedreview/a-statistical-tour-of-nips-2017-438201fb6c8a [Accessed 16-10-18]

Moore, Mike (2018). Worldwide AI investment to top $200bn by 2025. [Online] Techradar. Available at: https://www.techradar.com/news/worldwide-ai-investment-to-top-dollar200bn-by-2025 [Accessed 16-10-18]

Polli, Frida (2018). AI for social impact. [Online] Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/fridapolli/2018/01/30/ai-for-social-impact/#7e5d2998343d [Accessed 16-10-18]

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“We’re promised instant catalogue shopping—just point and click for great deals. (…) Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn’t—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.” This is what Clifford Stoll said about the rise of the Internet in an interview with Newsweek, back in 1995.

Since the emergence of the Internet, a lot has changed and the Internet has helped to shape the world as we know it today. I dare to say that every young adult in The Netherlands has ordered something online at least once in its life. For the younger generation ordering online feels like second nature, but how about the next step, in which you are not the one who orders, but a smart device is running your household and orders products for you online?

Currently, most tech giants are working on a smart fridge that will order food for you and will enable the fridge to become the hub in your household (Samsung, 2017). The smart fridge of today requires humans to manually enter items on lists to track and replenish inventory (Ricker, 2017). Samsung was one of the first to discuss this idea, however, it is Amazon who is putting the idea into reality. With the new developments in which the sensor of the fridge uses a deep learning system and is linked to your Amazon account, it will enable the system to order products without your interference (Ricker, 2017).

Sounds handy right? Never having to worry about shopping sounds good to most. However, what happens if your smart home runs your household, orders everything without your interference and after ordering delivers the products at your house with a drone delivery system? In this system, which Amazon is pursuing (Oswald, 2017), human interaction becomes redundant. But does it mean humans become redundant in the economic cycle as well and will we merely consume products? Time will tell.

References:

Ricker, T. (2017) Wanted: An Amazon fridge that automatically reorders food. [Online] The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/18/14308352/amazon-echo-refrigerator-reorders-groceries [Retrieved: 12-10-18]

Samsung (2017). Connection more kitchens with family hub 2.0. [Online] Samsung. Available at https://news.samsung.com/global/interview-connecting-more-kitchens-with-family-hub-2-0 [Retrieved: 12-10-18]

Oswald, E. (2017) Here’s everything you need to know about Amazon’s drone delivery project, Prime Air. [Online] Digital Trends. Available at: https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/amazon-prime-air-delivery-drones-history-progress/ [Retrieved: 12-10-18]