The Rise of AI - Artificial Intelligence

The boundaries between humans and machines are increasingly closing up,  Marketers are already contemplating how artificially intelligent (AI) will help them create smarter campaigns and personalise marketing messages in real-time. Organisations are even debating the creation of a chief artificial intelligence officer (CAIO) to take ownership of delivering intelligent customer experiences and countries like Dubai are including these into their government portfolio.

What is AI?

According to the father of Artificial Intelligence, John McCarthy, it is “The science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs”.

Artificial Intelligence is a way of making a computer, a computer-controlled robot, or a software think intelligently, in the similar manner the intelligent humans think.

It is a collection of advanced technologies that allows machines to sense, comprehend, act and learn. AI is accomplished by studying how human brain thinks, and how humans learn, decide, and work while trying to solve a problem, and then using the outcomes of this study as a basis of developing intelligent software and systems.

Our lives will never remain same anymore. AI-powered devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home are now invading millions of households. We are now talking to machines and speakers in our homes rather than human.

Philosophy of AI

While exploiting the power of the computer systems, the curiosity of human, lead him to wonder, “Can a machine think and behave like humans do?”

Thus, the development of AI started with the intention of creating similar intelligence in machines that we find and regard high in humans.

But as machines evolve and become more intelligent, where does that leave humans?

Most of the focus in the industry tends to be on AI replacing human jobs. But how many organisations have thought about using AI to help humans perform better in their jobs?

Rather than thinking about AI replacing us, we should see it as allowing us to do things better. How can we use it to help us do a better job? We need to try to turn people into problem-solvers, not just for their customers but within their own internal structures too. Start thinking of organisations as ecosystems and use these frameworks to create better jobs

AI is changing our lives:

1. Transportation

The speed of the transition to AI-guided transport may catch the public by surprise. Self-driving vehicles will be widely adopted by 2020, and it won’t just be cars — driverless delivery trucks, autonomous delivery drones, and personal robots will also be commonplace.

Uber-style “cars as a service” are likely to replace car ownership, which may displace public transport or see it transition towards similar on-demand approaches. Commutes will become a time to relax or work productively, encouraging people to live further from home, which could combine with reduced need for parking to drastically change the face of modern cities.

2. Home and Service Robots

Robots that do things like deliver packages and clean offices will become much more common in the next 15 years. Mobile chipmakers are already squeezing the power of last century’s supercomputers into systems-on-a-chip, drastically boosting robots’ on-board computing capacity.

Cloud-connected robots will be able to share data to accelerate learning. Low-cost 3D sensors like Microsoft’s Kinect will speed the development of perceptual technology, while advances in speech comprehension will enhance robots’ interactions with humans. Robot arms in research labs today are likely to evolve into consumer devices around 2025.

3. Healthcare

AI’s impact on healthcare will depend more on regulation than technology. The most transformative possibilities of AI in healthcare require access to data, but there remains the challenge of finding solutions to the difficult problem of balancing privacy and access to data. Implementation of electronic health records has also been poor.

If these hurdles can be cleared, AI could automate the legwork of diagnostics by mining patient records and the scientific literature. This kind of digital assistant could allow doctors to focus on the human dimensions of care while using their intuition and experience to guide the process.

4. Education

The line between the classroom and individual learning will be blurred by 2030. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) will interact with intelligent tutors and other AI technologies to allow personalized education at scale. Computer-based learning won’t replace the classroom, but online tools will help students learn at their own pace using techniques that work for them.

AI-enabled education systems will learn individuals’ preferences, but by aggregating this data they’ll also accelerate education research and the development of new tools. Online teaching will increasingly widen educational access, making learning lifelong, enabling people to retrain, and increasing access to top-quality education in developing countries.

5. Public Safety and Security

By 2030 cities are likely to rely heavily on AI technologies to detect and predict crime. Automatic processing of CCTV and drone footage will make it possible to rapidly spot anomalous behavior. This will not only allow law enforcement to react quickly but also forecast when and where crimes will be committed. Fears that bias and error could lead to people being unduly targeted are justified, but well-thought-out systems could actually counteract human bias and highlight police malpractice.

Techniques like speech and gait analysis could help interrogators and security guards detect suspicious behavior. Contrary to concerns about overly pervasive law enforcement, AI is likely to make policing more targeted and therefore less overbearing.

6. Employment and Workplace

The effects of AI will be felt most profoundly in the workplace. By 2030 AI will be encroaching on skilled professionals like lawyers, financial advisers, and radiologists. As it becomes capable of taking on more roles, organizations will be able to scale rapidly with relatively small workforces.

AI is more likely to replace tasks rather than jobs in the near term, and it will also create new jobs and markets, even if it’s hard to imagine what those will be right now. While it may reduce incomes and job prospects, increasing automation will also lower the cost of goods and services, effectively making everyone richer.

7. Entertainment

Entertainment in 2030 will be interactive, personalized, and immeasurably more engaging than today. Breakthroughs in sensors and hardware will see virtual reality and companion robots increasingly enter the home. Users will be able to interact with entertainment systems conversationally, and they will show emotion, empathy, and the ability to adapt to environmental cues like the time of day. This is happening with Amazon Echo and Google Home already.

But advances in AI will also make creating your own entertainment far easier and more engaging, whether by helping to compose music or choreograph dances using an avatar. Democratizing the production of high-quality entertainment makes it nearly impossible to predict how highly fluid human tastes for entertainment will develop.

Conclusion

AI is set to alter in a very fundamental way, how businesses are done and how we lives. This will allow the execution of both manual and digital back-end processes to eliminate repetitive tasks and liberate our workforce. Customers no longer need manuals or try to understand complex technology, they can simply talk to, gesture at, or touch the AI that controls it.

[AI will enable intelligent enterprise, drives intelligent processes, create intelligent products and unlock values from dark data. Accenture AI Publication]