In a nondescript building near downtown Chicago, Marc Gyongyosi and the members of IFM/Onetrack are growing and going from strength to strength.
Artificial intelligence has a fundamental principle: simple thinking. The words are written in simple font on a piece of paper and taped to the back wall of their two-story industrial building upstairs. However, what they are doing here with AI is anything but simple.
The Future of Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence is shaping the future of humanity in almost every industry. It is already a major driver of emerging technologies such as big data, robotics and the Internet of Things, and will continue to play the role of technology innovator for the foreseeable future.
Using machine learning and computer vision to detect and classify various “security incidents,” this shoebox-sized device doesn’t see it all, but it sees many. Such as how the driver looks when operating the vehicle, how fast they are driving, where they are driving, the location of people around them, and how other forklift operators maneuver their vehicles. IFM’s software automatically detects security breaches – such as the use of mobile phones – and notifies warehouse managers for immediate action. The main purpose of this is to prevent accidents and increase efficiency. Gyongyosi claimed that just knowing one of IFM’s devices was watching had a “huge impact”.
Gyongyosi said: “Think about cameras, it’s really the richest sensor we have right now, and the price is very interesting. Smartphones, cameras and image sensors are getting very cheap these days, but we capture a lot of information. From a single image , maybe 25 signals can be inferred; but six months later, we can infer 100 or 150 signals from the same image. The only difference is the software that looks at the image…every customer can get from every single one we bring in and other customers as our systems start to see and learn more of the process and detect more of what is important and relevant.”
The evolution of artificial intelligence
IFM is just one of countless AI innovators in this growing field. For example, 2,300 of the 9,130 patents that IBM inventors will receive in 2021 are related to artificial intelligence. Tesla founder and tech giant Elon Musk has donated $10 million to OpenAI, a nonprofit research firm, to fund ongoing research.
Decades after the evolutionary period that began with “knowledge engineering” and was marked by sporadic dormancy, technology has progressed to machine learning based on models and algorithms, with an increasing focus on perception, reasoning, and induction. Artificial intelligence is now taking center stage again in unprecedented ways, and it won’t be out of the spotlight any time soon.
Why is AI important? AI is important because it is the foundation of computer learning. Through artificial intelligence, computers are able to take advantage of large amounts of data and use their learned “intelligence” to make optimal decisions and discoveries in a fraction of the time it takes humans.
Which industries will artificial intelligence change?
Modern AI – more specifically, “Narrow AI”. It uses data-trained models to perform an objective function, often in the category of deep learning or machine learning — hardly a major industry has yet to be affected. This has been especially the case over the past few years, as data collection and analysis has increased dramatically due to the powerful connectivity of the Internet of Things, the proliferation of connected devices, and faster computer processing speeds.
Some industries are at the beginning of an AI journey, others are seasoned travelers. Both have a long way to go. In any case, the impact of artificial intelligence on life today cannot be ignored.
Transportation: While perfecting them may take some time, self-driving cars will one day carry us from one place to another.
Manufacturing: AI-powered robots work alongside humans to perform limited-scope tasks such as assembly and stacking, predictive analytics sensors to keep equipment running smoothly.
Healthcare: In healthcare, where AI is relatively nascent, disease diagnosis is more rapid and accurate, drug discovery is accelerated and simplified, virtual nursing assistants monitor patients, and big data analytics help create a more personalized patient experience.
Education: Textbooks are digitized with the help of artificial intelligence, early virtual tutors help human tutors, facial analysis measures students’ emotions to help determine who is struggling or bored, and better tailor the experience to individual needs.
Media: Journalism is also leveraging AI and will continue to benefit from it. Bloomberg uses Cyborg technology to help quickly understand complex financial reports. AssociatedPress leverages the natural language capabilities of AutomatedInsights to produce 3,700 earnings stories per year, nearly four times the number in the past.
Customer Service: Last but not least, Google is working on an AI assistant that can make an appointment like a human by calling, such as an appointment at a nearby hair salon and more. In addition to words, the system understands situational context and nuance.
But these advances—and many others—are just the beginning. There will be more in the future.
David Vandegrift, CTO and co-founder of customer relationship management firm 4Degrees, said: “I think any assumption that the capabilities of intelligent software will reach their limits at some point is wrong.”
With companies spending billions of dollars each year on AI products and services, and tech giants like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon spending billions to create those products and services, universities are making AI a more important part of their curriculum part of it, and the U.S. Department to upgrade its AI game, something big is bound to happen. Some of these developments are moving towards full realization; some are only theoretical and will likely remain so. All of this is disruptive, for better or worse, with no recession in sight.
“A lot of industries go through a pattern: winter, winter, and then eternal spring. We may be in an artificial intelligence eternal spring,” Andrew Ng, a former head of Google and chief scientist at Baidu, told ZDNet.
The impact of artificial intelligence on society
How artificial intelligence will change work
In a presentation at Northwestern University, AI expert Kai-Fu Lee advocated for AI technology and its imminent impact, while also pointing out its side effects and limitations. For the former, it warns:
“The bottom 90% of the population, especially the bottom 50% of the world in terms of income or education, will be seriously harmed by unemployment… A simple question, ‘How does a program work?’ This is where AI replaces jobs possibility, because AI can learn to optimize itself in daily tasks. And the more the number, the more objective the work, such as sorting things into the trash, washing dishes, picking fruit and answering customer service calls – these are all repetitive And routine scripted tasks. In 5, 10 or 15 years, they will be replaced by AI.”
In the warehouses of online giant and artificial intelligence giant Amazon, which has more than 100,000 robots, the functions of picking and packing are still performed by humans, but that will change.
Lee’s sentiment was recently echoed by Infosys president Mohit Joshi, who told The New York Times: “People want to achieve big things. Earlier, they had a 5% to 10% incremental goal of reducing the workforce. Now they Think, ‘Why can’t we do this with the only 1% we have?'”
More optimistically, Lee emphasized that today’s AI is useless in two ways: It has no creativity, nor the ability to empathize or love. Rather, it is “a tool for amplifying human creativity.” What about the solution? Those in repetitive or routine jobs must learn new skills to avoid being eliminated. Amazon even provides funds to its employees to train other companies for their jobs.
“One of the absolute prerequisites for AI to be successful in many fields is that we invest heavily in education and retrain people for new jobs,” said Klara Nahrstedt, professor and director of computer science at the University of Illinoisat Urbana-Champaign.
Klara worries that this won’t happen widely or often. IFM’s Gyongyosi is even more specific.
“People need to learn to program like a new language,” Gyongyosi said. “They need to do it early because that’s really the future. In the future, if you don’t know how to code, you don’t know how to program, and this will only change. more difficult.”
“While many of those displaced by technology will find new jobs, this will not happen overnight. Much like the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy in the United States during the Industrial Revolution, this largely led to After the Great Recession, people finally got back on their feet. However, the short-term impact was huge.” Vandegrift said: “The transition between jobs disappearing and new jobs appearing is not necessarily as easy as one might think.”
Mike Mendelson, a Learner Experience Designer at NVIDIA, is a different educator than Nahrstedt. He works with developers who want to learn more about artificial intelligence and apply it to their business.
“If they understand the capabilities of the technology, and they know the field very well, they start to make connections and think, ‘Maybe this is an AI problem,'” it said. “It’s more of a situation than ‘I have a specific one I want to solve.’ The problem’ is more common.
artificial intelligence in the near future
In Mendelson’s view, some of the most interesting AI research and experiments will have an impact in the near future, and this will happen in two areas: “reinforcement” learning, which deals with rewards and penalties, rather than labeled data; and generative adversarial networks (GANs for short), which allow computer algorithms to create rather than just evaluate by pitting two networks against each other. The former is exemplified by the Go ability of Google DeepMind’s AlphaGoZero, and the latter is exemplified by raw image or audio generation based on learning on specific topics such as celebrities or specific types of music.
On a larger scale, AI is expected to have a major impact on sustainability, climate change and environmental issues. Ideally, through the use of sophisticated sensors, cities would become less crowded, less polluted, and generally more livable.
“Once something is predicted, certain policies and rules can be created,” says Nahrstedt. For example, sensors installed in cars can send data about traffic conditions, which can predict potential problems and optimize the flow of cars. In its view, this has not been perfected in any way. Still in its infancy. But many years later, it will play a very important role.
Will AI rule the world? AI is expected to have a lasting impact on nearly every industry imaginable – as 60% of businesses are expected to be impacted by AI. We’re already seeing artificial intelligence in smart devices, cars, healthcare systems, and the most popular applications. We will continue to see its impact penetrate deeper into many other industries for the foreseeable future.
AI and privacy risks
Of course, AI’s reliance on big data already affects privacy to a large extent. Just look at Cambridge Analytica’s hoax on Facebook or Amazon’s wiretap on Alexa, just two of the many examples of tech getting out of hand. Critics argue that without proper regulations and self-imposed restrictions, things will get worse. In 2015, Apple CEO Tim Cook mocked rivals Google and Facebook for their greedy data mining.
“They’re trying to learn as much as they can about you and try to monetize it,” Cook said in a 2015 speech. “We think that’s wrong.”
Later, in a conversation in Brussels, Belgium, Cook laid out his concerns.
“Advancing AI by collecting large amounts of personal data is laziness, not efficiency,” Cook said. “For AI to be truly smart, it must respect human values, including privacy. If we do this wrong, the danger will be profound.”
Many people agree with this point of view. In 2018, UK-based human rights and privacy groups Article19 and Privacy International published a paper arguing that anxiety about AI was limited to its day-to-day functions, rather than catastrophic changes like the emergence of robotic overlords.
“AI can benefit society if implemented responsibly,” the authors wrote. “However, as with most emerging technologies, commercial and state use do have the potential to adversely affect human rights.”
The authors acknowledge that the vast amount of data collected can be used to try to predict future behavior in benign ways, such as spam filters and recommendation engines. But there is also a real threat that it can negatively impact individuals’ right to privacy and freedom from discrimination.
Preparing for the future of artificial intelligence
The possibilities of artificial intelligence
Speaking at Westminster Abbey at the end of 2018, Stuart Russell, an internationally renowned artificial intelligence expert, jokingly (or not) said that he had reached a formal agreement with journalists not to engage with journalists unless they agreed not to put the ‘Terminator’ robot in the article. the conversation. Its one-liners reveal a palpable disdain for Hollywood’s portrayal of artificial intelligence in the distant future, which tends to be overly nervous and apocalyptic. What Russell calls “human-level AI,” also known as artificial general intelligence, has long been the stuff of fantasy. But it is very unlikely that it will be realized in a short time or at all.
“There are still many major breakthroughs that need to be achieved before we can reach human-level AI,” Russell explained.
Russell also pointed out that artificial intelligence does not yet fully understand language. This shows the clear difference between humans and AI at the moment: Humans can translate machine language and understand it, while AI cannot translate human language. However, if artificial intelligence can understand our language, then artificial intelligence systems can read and understand all words.
“Once we have this ability to query all of human knowledge, it will be able to synthesize, integrate and answer questions that humans have never answered,” Russell added, “because it has no reading and no ability to put the history of The dots between things that have always been separate are brought together and connected.”
This gives us a lot to think about. Simulating the human brain is extremely difficult at this point, another reason why the future of AGI remains hypothetical. long-term employment
John Laird, a professor of engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, has been researching the field for decades.
“Our goal has always been to try to build what we call cognitive architectures, which we think are innate to intelligent systems,” Laird said of the work largely inspired by human psychology, “for example, one thing we know Yes, the human brain isn’t just a homogeneous set of neurons. It’s a real structure made up of different components, some of which have to do with knowledge of how to do things in this world.”
This is called procedural memory. There is also knowledge based on general facts, which is semantic memory; and, knowledge about previous experiences (or personal facts), which is called episodic memory. A project in Laird’s lab involves using natural language instructions to teach robots simple games like chess and mind games. These directives usually include a description of the objectives, outlines of legal measures, and circumstances of failure. Robots internalize these instructions and use them to plan their actions. However, as ever, breakthroughs always take time—slower than Laird and his colleagues expected.
“Every time we make progress,” Laird said, “we also gain a new understanding of how difficult it is.”
Is AGI a Threat to Humanity?
Many of the leading figures in AI agree, and some even exaggerate it, a nightmarish scenario that includes the so-called “singularity” where superintelligent machines take over humans, by enslaving or eradicating them and permanently altering the human race. exist.
The late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking famously hypothesized that if artificial intelligence itself began to design better artificial intelligence than human programmers, the result could be “machines outsmarting us, outsmarting snails.” Elon Musk believed and warned, AGI is the greatest threat to human existence. Efforts to achieve this, it said, are like “summoning the devil”. There’s even a concern that his friend, Google co-founder Larry Page, might unintentionally lead something “evil” to appear, despite his good intentions. For example, “a fleet of AI-enhanced robots capable of destroying humanity.” Even IFM’s Gyongyosi, who is not alarmist when it comes to AI predictions, doesn’t rule out any possibility. It says that at some point, humans will no longer need to train systems; they will learn and develop on their own.
“I don’t think the methods we’re using right now in these areas are going to cause machines to decide to kill us,” Gyongyosi said. “I think maybe five or 10 years from now, I’m going to have to re-evaluate that statement because we’re going to have Different methods and ways to handle these things.
While killing machines will likely remain the stuff of fiction, many believe they will replace humans in various ways.
The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University has released the results of an artificial intelligence survey. Titled “When will AI surpass human performance? Evidence from AI experts,” it contains estimates from 352 machine learning researchers on how AI will evolve over the next few years.
There are many optimists in this group. The median of respondents said that by 2026, machines will be able to write school papers; by 2027, self-driving trucks will no longer need drivers; by 2031, artificial intelligence will outperform humans in retail; by 2049 By 2053, artificial intelligence may be the next Stephen King; by 2053, it may be the next Charlie Teo. Most shocking: By 2137, all human jobs will be automated. But what about humans themselves? No doubt, drinking umbrella drinks from robots.
Diego Klabjan, a professor at Northwestern University and founding director of the MasterofScienceinAnalytics project, considers himself an AGI skeptic.
It explained: “Currently, computers can only process more than 10,000 words. So, there are millions of neurons. But the human brain has billions of neurons, which are connected in a very interesting and complex way. together, and the current state-of-the-art is just doing simple connections in very simple patterns. So with existing hardware and software technology, going from a few million neurons to billions of neurons, I don’t think That’s going to happen.”
How will we use AGI?
Klabjan also doesn’t quite believe in extreme scenarios — for example, where murderous robots turn Earth into a smoldering hell. It is more concerned with machines – such as war robots – being indoctrinated with the wrong “motives” by evil humans. In a 2018 TED talk, Max Tegmark, professor of physics at MIT and lead researcher in artificial intelligence, said: “The real threat to AI is not maliciousness, as in stupid Hollywood movies, but capability – what AI achieves. The goals don’t align with our goals.” That’s Laird’s view, too.
“I definitely don’t see a situation where something wakes up and decides it’s going to take over the world,” Laird said. “I think it’s the stuff of science fiction, not the end of the future.”
Laird’s biggest concern isn’t evil AI itself, but “evil humans using AI as a false force multiplier” for many crimes like bank robberies and credit card fraud. So while it’s often frustrated with the pace of progress, the slow burn of AI can actually be a blessing.
“Understanding what we’re creating and how we’re going to integrate it into society may be just what we need,” Laird said.
But no one knows the exact answer.
Russell said in his Westminster speech: “There are several major breakthroughs that must be achieved, and may soon be achieved.” It cited the 1917 British physicist Ernest Rutherford’s proposal for nuclear fission (the splitting of atoms) The quick turn effect, adding that “it’s hard to predict when these conceptual breakthroughs will happen.”
But whenever they do, he emphasizes the importance of preparation. This means starting or continuing discussions about the ethical use of AGI and whether it should be regulated. That means working to eliminate data bias, which is detrimental to algorithms and is currently a major flaw in AI. That means working hard to invent and enhance security measures that can control the technology. It also means humbly realizing that just because we can do it doesn’t mean we should.
“Most AGI researchers expect to achieve AGI within a few decades, and if we hit it unprepared, it could be the biggest mistake in human history. It could lead to a brutal global dictatorship with unprecedented inequality , surveillance, suffering, and possibly even human extinction,” Tegmark said in a TED talk: “But if we play it safe, we may end up in a future where everyone is better off — the poor get richer, the richer People are richer, everyone is healthy, and everyone is free to live out their dreams.”
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