How Will AI Benefit the World That We Live In?

How will AI benefit the world that we live in?

It may have been eclipsed in the headlines by cryptocurrencies in the last few months but the big tech story of recent times has been Artificial Intelligence or AI for short. But what is it exactly, how is it being used at the moment and, perhaps more pertinently, what’s it got in store for the future?

To put it in its simplest terms, artificial intelligence is the ability of a machine to carry out the sorts of things that the human brain can do. These include having the ability to reason, remember past experiences, use and understand language and even to understand and display emotion. It’s a concept that has fascinated us for a long time and was represented in fiction long before the reality became a possibility. One only has to look at the depiction of robots like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz or the humanoid in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to see how it has long captured the imagination.

The origins of AI

The main restriction on its development over the years has been a technological one. Until 1949 computers didn’t have the facility to store information, simply to carry out demands. So although the legendary British codebreaker Alan Turing was already toying with the idea of creating a machine that could think shortly after World War Two the computing power to make it happen simply wasn’t in existence. However, a breakthrough came in 1956 when a program called the Logic Theorist was presented to the world. This was the work of computer scientists Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Herbert Simon and presented a solution which was able to copy some of the problem-solving skills of humans.

This was the starting point for a flurry of development over the next couple of decades which saw Marvin Minsky announce in 1970 that he believed that the world was only eight years away from having a machine with the intelligence of the average human. While this was overly optimistic, AI continued to be refined and in 1997 the world was shocked when a chess playing program developed by IBM and called Deep Blue beat the world champion Gary Kasparov. In the same year voice recognition software was also first introduced by Microsoft, another quantum leap forward.

By 2017, Inc. Magazine was proudly proclaiming it as “the year of Artificial Intelligence” and a couple of reports released in the UK suggested that this could really be the case. Researchers at the consultancy firm Accenture announced that the UK economy could well benefit to the tune of $846 billion by 2035 if the country embraced all that AI had to offer and in a survey conducted by OnBuy.Com it gave some valuable insights in to the effects that consumers believed AI would have.

How it’s poised to change the world

61% felt that it would streamline the workplace with 37% believing that it would take over most mundane tasks and 24% convinced that it will help to increase business revenue and accelerate processes. The survey was equally revealing about which particular industries people believed stood to benefit most from AI. 45% thought that engineering had most to gain, 40% believed it would transform administration and 30% stated that customer service would benefit.

Looking at the ways in which engineering stands to benefit from AI the first, and most obvious, will be in the increasing use of robotics to increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve quality. With the added potential of machinery that can diagnose operational issues in their earliest stages and even put forward the most straightforward ways of resolving the situation these are exciting prospects. But this isn’t to say that engineers themselves will not be able to interact with the new technology, indeed there will be an even greater need for human experts to see just how far it can be developed, showcasing their own creativity and technical expertise in the process.

In terms of administration, AI also has multiple roles to play from reducing the burden of mundane and repetitive tasks to assisting HR departments in sorting through CVs and automatically shortlisting the most likely candidates without the need for human intervention.

In an age when cyber attacks are a constant threat to organisations of every size AI also has a vital role to play in identifying suspicious operations taking place across a company’s systems thus enabling either an automatic or a manual shutdown before serious damage occurs. Once again, AI is designed to work in conjunction with human intervention and to enhance employees’ skills rather than to replace them.

In the last sector singled out by the survey respondents, customer care, “chatbots” are already being used to deal with a wide range of duties whether it’s answering online queries or processing service requests. It’s even been estimated that by 2020 around 85% of all interactions will be via this channel. Its consistency, not to mention 24/7 availability, are two of the main driving forces behind its popularity with organisations of every kind.

The ultimate pupil turned teacher?

Another area that has a lot to gain from AI is education. For example, it has some obvious applications such as in training medical professionals with AI devices replacing actual patients and responding in the same way to advice or treatment that a person would. But it also has great potential for helping in many other, more unexpected ways too.

A case in point comes from the poker challenge laid down against four of the world’s best players in February 2017. Over the course of 20 days playing 11 hours a day the poker bot called Libratus emerged victorious winning the equivalent of $1.7 million in chips. As the tournament progressed the bot gradually refined the way it played to dominate the game.

The manner in which it achieved this differed from the chess-playing Big Blue from 20 years previously as it only had imperfect information to work with – an integral feature of a game of poker in which other players’ hands are concealed. That a machine could develop and refine the way in which it played surely means that real-life players could learn from its strategies but, when questioned, a number of poker pros were not so convinced with the inclusion of AI in poker.

The leisure principle

Whether or not AI helps to create a group of ultra poker players it will certainly have an increasing effect in all our lives. It’s estimated that in the US by 2030 it could have rendered up to a third of the total working population redundant with a worldwide figure approaching 800 million people. One could argue that this will liberate those millions to pursue less mundane and more fulfilling careers but the question remains, doing what? It’s a question that has been germane ever since the Industrial Revolution and one which has never really been adequately answered.

Some sceptics are also airing concerns that by putting too much reliance on AI we are exposing vulnerabilities like never before. That’s because however tried and tested the algorithms that drive AI have been they are never 100% fool proof or trustworthy so continued human surveillance and intervention will always be needed. And, as for when the machines become so sophisticated that they can think and act for themselves, we really will be entering into the realm where science fiction becomes fact. But, luckily for the human race, that still seems a long way off at the moment.