AI as a concept has always been a part of the human imagination. Even decades back, people were thinking about robots that could act and function just like human beings, whether it be in Hollywood or in literature.
Now, in the beginning of the 21st century, AI has just begun to become realized. We’ve almost built standardized self-driving cars, and we already have pretty powerful speech recognition and image recognition technology. Much of the foundational technology has been built out, so there’s already a high potential platform for the future of AI. Since we’re at the very edge of unleashing the full capabilities of AI, the field is still crazy unexplored. It’s at this very moment in time where we get to shape AI’s development, so that it doesn’t turn into the human-ruling race we hear about so often in science fiction. We want to use AI to assist, not replace, humans.
All of that was just in the beginning of the 21st century. What about in 2050, or even 2100? Considering how fast the field has evolved (it’s really just been a few decades), even the next 10 years could look extremely different. Economically, there’s potential for many jobs to be automated by machines. It is an issue that brings up the question of how humans will cope without meaningful work. But there are also counter arguments made from the opposing viewpoint. Perhaps AI will instead create new demand for certain skills and create new jobs. As for how AI will affect our planet, it seems like there will be a positive impact. AI can be utilized to solve problems ranging from pollution to food sustainability. Finally, there are clear concerns surrounding privacy in the age of AI. With increased facial recognition technology, it is possible that people will be tracked everywhere they go. Even online presences can be analyzed to identify people who think they are anonymous on the internet.
In every scenario, there are greatly beneficial things that AI can do for us, but there will always be the risk of AI overextending the boundaries we set for it. The most important thing to do now is to think well and hard before rushing AI’s development, something society is failing to do right now. AI is advancing at a rapid pace, but we still haven’t been able to think through the ethical issues and develop policies for those issues.
The other course of action for everyone not involved with AI development is to start preparing for that future. Post AI gives a broad overview of how a future with AI may look like, but it just scratches the surface of what the future could hold.
Read about it. Watch videos about it. Understand how it works.
Because AI is coming, and you’ll have to live it; whether you’re excited about it or not.
View references here.