ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: THE FUTURE IS NOW

By Tadia Rice

January 2020

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. The term originated in 1956 when solving problems took on a new methodology. By the next decade the United States Department of Defense began teaching computers to imitate human thinking. In the 1970s the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) finished street mapping. Long before Siri, Alexa or Cortana DARPA introduced personal assistants in 2003.?

Machine intelligent computer-controlled robots have long been able to perform tasks commonly associated with simulations of the human brain, and even exceed it. Humans have unique neural networks that allow for achievement like learning, logic, reasoning, perception, and creativity. That was then. This is now, and AI powers everything from your radio to your refrigerator. Yes, really. All neural actions can now be replicated by the deep learning advanced algorithms of computing power, along with tremendous storage and data processing technology. The reality is that intelligent machines will be trained to learn and solve problems more efficiently than humans could when relying on older technologies – or their own brains. Humans need more time to analyze data from e-communications, social media, video footage, and smart sensors.?

Time is the enemy. The efficiency of machine or deep learning that AI produces is a relational databases and augments organic human intelligence. Devices, instruments, and inventions that were only imagined in old sci-fi movies are now creating the keystone for how humanity produces goods, operates services, communicates, and manages everything we do now, and in the years to come. The AI revolution has just begun This will impact our planet in ways we cannot yet imagine..

AI already permeates our reality, it?s part of our everyday lives, it?s used to make decisions about our lives from fitness trackers and Smartwatches to voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Home Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana; from chess-playing computers to behavioral algorithms and suggestive searches to autonomously powered self-driving cars; from Oral-B’s Genius X toothbrush with sensors, biometric identification, to integrated wearable devices; from DNA sequence matching, e-discovery document review, to cyber-crime detection; It?s those phone chatbots that aggravate us with their “live chat” menus while we speak our response to a computerized customer service we know doesn?t understand us. It?s these times that I really want to speak to a human.

On the upside, AI has helped create smart buildings, like the 23-foot-high Tower that removes particles from the air using ion-technology to draws in dirty air and then electrically charges those particles and blows clean air back into the environment.?

Some of the top well-known Artificial Intelligence companies investing in AI technology are Tesla, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and APEX Technologies, China?s top artificial intelligence company.

Technology is moving faster than any expections. It?s exponential with potential (you can quote me on that).?We can?t really predict, with accuracy, what our world will welcome in five or even 10 years, let alone 25. What we do know is that humans rely more and more on electronic devices, and they better adapt to us, many people find interactions with machines more comfortable than dealing with humans and all the varied emotions attached to our species. Robots have been programmed to read human emotions and develop their own. Smart assistants like Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant are becoming the predecessors of super-intelligent advisory systems that many humans rely upon. Facebook and Google use algorithms to predict our feed preferences, from politics to pantyhose.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil has made many correct predictions about the milestones of technological growth, missing only by a year or two. For example, of the 147 predictions that Kurzweil has made since the 1990’s, 127 have come true. Kurzweil explains that instead of the machines-taking-over the world, there will be an unparalleled human-machine synthesis. Kurzweil predicts that we will be able to connect our brains to the cloud by the year of 2030, and by 2045 artificial intelligence will be on the same level with human capabilities.?

If indeed Kurzweil;s predictions come true then philosophical questions must be posed. What happens to our reality, our consciousness, our souls? Will humans remain as is or actually become something different? ?

AI will change the way we work just like automation already has. Our modern world is less laborious because robots have reduced the amount of manual labor in both industry and the home. The industrial era is finished. It died back in the 1950s when machine intelligence started catching up to human intelligence. Robin Hanson, associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University says, “Enjoy the twilight of the industrial era while it lasts.”

Robin Hanson, professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. As an expert on idea futures, artificial intelligence, Bayesian statistics, and hypertext publishing, he is the author of The Age Of EM: Work, Love And Life When Robots Rule The Earth.?

Hanson?s hypothesis concerning brain emulation and its eventual impact on society is that, “We’ll develop the technology for emulating brains on computers in the next 100 years. They will quickly put every human out of work and create a new civilization, living by the billions or trillions in a few megacities. This will end the industrial era, and we will enter a whole new way of living.”

This is a compelling, but disturbing prediction since humans have values include work and purpose of life. If humans no longer need to work, or maintain physical well-being, or socialize, or even think, how will they adapt - and what will they do with their time? My imagination is reeling!

The last century has witnessed the most dramatic technological advancements in human history. I believe that the next 100 years will propel civilization onward to new heights, and this will be due to rise of quantum computing and AI. Not only will humans learn how to better program AI, but the AI itself will take on new and different behaviors that some find frightening and others find exciting. Clearly, there are risks and opportunities that lay in the unknown future. Quantum computers can solve the most complex problems faster and more efficiently than humans. But, many wonder if AI has the power to destroy our world, or create a utopia on earth. Will we become a form of cyborg with augmented realities, or live in symbiosis with AI? What might humanity lose compared to what we may gain??