How Artificial Intelligence Will Disrupt Your Life

AI and Robotics Will Redefine How We Live and Work

We are on the verge of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another unlike anything humankind has experienced before. The main driver for this technological revolution is Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Technological change driven by AI will change not only what we do but also who we are. It will affect our identity and all the issues associated with it: our sense of privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns, the time we devote to work and leisure, and how we develop our careers, cultivate our skills, and nurture relationships. But the development and applications of artificial intelligence can also present a dystopian threat to our collective and individual well being.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

From SIRI to self-driving cars, artificial intelligence (AI) is progressing rapidly. While science fiction often portrays AI as robots with human-like characteristics, AI can encompass anything from Google’s search algorithms to IBM’s Watson to autonomous robots and weapons systems.

Artificial intelligence today is often referred to as narrow AI (or weak AI), which is designed to perform a narrow task (eg: facial recognition or only internet searches or driving a car). The other kind of Artificial Intelligence is termed general AL (AGI or strong AI) which is designed to “think,” and solve problems much like humans. While narrow AI may outperform humans at a specific task is, like playing chess or solving equations, AGI would outperform humans at nearly every cognitive task.

Artificial intelligence involves the attempt to make machines think in the way humans do. The famous Turing Test is a test for intelligence in a computer, requiring that a human being should be unable to distinguish the machine from another human being by using the replies to questions put to both. Arthur Samuel, a pioneer in the field of Artificial Intelligence, defined machine learning as "the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed." Machine Learning at its most basic is the practice of using algorithms to parse data, learn from it, and then make a conclusion or prediction.

Robots are autonomous or semi-autonomous machine applications of Artificial Intelligence that can act independently of external commands. Robots make use of artificial intelligence to improve their autonomous functions by learning. However, it is also common for robots to be designed with no capability to self-improve.

There are at least 33 types of Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT)

Think of all the “smart” devices that exist in our world from phones to appliances and even entire buildings. These devices are all connected through the “cloud” to the Internet, with the capability of communicating with each other.

An estimated 25 billion connected “things” will be in use by 2020. 65% of approximately 1,000 global business executives surveyed say they agree organizations that leverage the internet of things will have a significant advantage. The IoT market is predicted to grow to $1.7 trillion by 2020, marking a compound annual growth rate of 16.9%.

Technology author Anthony D. Williams argues, “Virtually every animate and inanimate object on Earth could be generating and transmitting data, including our homes, our cars, our natural and man-made environments, and yes, even our bodies.”