In the 10 years between when the internet was invented in the early 80s and when it became mainstream in the early 90s, there was no shortage of speculation, excitement, concern and even outrage about where it was all heading. The same is true when we look at the evolution of the touchscreen. In the beginning, even some Apple executives weren’t convinced on the viability of a touchscreen keyboard, with the vice president of marketing at the time going so far as to beg company leaders to include a physical keyboard on the device. And here we are today without a physical phone keyboard in sight.
As we now transition from a mobile-first society to an artificial intelligence (AI)-first world, where computing will continue to be intelligently weaved into the fabric of our lives, we’re at another crossroads. Even today’s most prominent technology leaders have wildly different opinions on our future.
Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, commented: “AI … is more profound than electricity or fire.” Jeff Bezos refers to the emergence of AI-based solutions as “an amazing renaissance” and Mark Zuckerberg believes that “in the next five to 10 years, AI is going to deliver so many improvements in the quality of our lives.”
These thoughts from Zuckerberg were in direct response to Elon Musk saying that “AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization.” And the late Stephen Hawking, in Musk’s corner, once said that AI could be the “worst event in the history of our civilization.”
Personally, I’m thrilled to see the kinds of benefits AI can bring to the world of IT. My company continues to experiment with different kinds of machine learning methods that will one day make common IT challenges obsolete. Imagine a world where a business gets hit with ransomware and that business’s infrastructure is able to address it without human intervention and without the company losing a single byte of data or a penny in ransom fees. Or a world where Black Friday, Prime Day or any other major traffic event has zero chance of resulting in a downed site because the behind the scenes AI will automatically detect bubbling issues and reallocate infrastructure resources as needed.
Regardless of your opinion on the technology, AI is projected to be in almost every new software by 2020. Yet most people don’t realize that AI is already a part of everyday life. The technology we touch daily uses AI in varying ways: Netflix, Pinterest, Tinder, Google search and email and much, much more. A lot of what we like about these applications are the result of AI. Netflix recommends your new favorite show, that’s AI. Google knows what you want to say and helps you write emails automatically, again, AI. Tinder, quite literally, puts your best face forward using AI-based algorithms.
What these companies and some others are starting to figure out is that you don’t necessarily need to invent complex new tools or hire a multitude of data scientists to incorporate AI. There are now a lot of existing platforms that can help you apply different kinds of advanced learning, whether it be machine learning, deep learning or another form. Amazon AI, different Google tools and even Facebook have options available to help you get started. (Full disclosure: Author's company is partnered with Amazon.)
Take Facebook’s population mapping initiative, for example. African governments and non-profits working on the African continent are already leveraging Facebook’s AI-based mapping tools to have a better understanding of exactly where people are living and working in Africa. It’s not so much that where people were living in Africa was a huge unknown, but the precision that Facebook’s AI adds to the equation makes a crucial difference.
Google’s also in the game. The behemoth recently announced its Google Cloud AI Platform, which is designed to provide organizations with openly available AI tools to complete their own, custom AI projects. This platform has been leveraged by the American Cancer Society and technology consultant Slalom to aid in tackling challenges in a breast cancer research study.
AI is, of course, far from perfect. If it was, every car would be self-driving at this point. I see this as both a challenge and an opportunity. Because of the complexity of AI, we are only getting part of the value of the data that we have as a company. Part of the complexity is that an incredible amount of time and resources goes into developing and implementing an AI system, something many organizations simply can’t afford. There are also certain industries and professions where it’s extremely worrisome to think about less human intervention (e.g., surgeons, teachers, even your basic customer service). There’s an understandable amount of skepticism and hesitation in replacing the human "hand" with an artificial one when something going wrong likely means someone getting hurt or, from a business mindset, means losing a customer.
Perhaps we can review history for guidance on how to proceed. Mobile technology has given the world both miracles and evils. Doctors that can assess remote, oversees patients from afar — this is good. Texting while driving — this is bad. Improving cancer research and ultimately increasing chances of finding a cure — there’s no question here. As we’re in these early stages, today’s technology leaders and largest corporations are going to set the tone for how AI is applied, and reflecting on the past and the incredibly positive applications already in play, I’d like to think that we’ll find the balance that equates to the most good.
