Tag Archives: general

#432165 Silicon Valley Is Winning the Race to ...

Posted on February 24, 2018 by Android

Henry Ford didn’t invent the motor car. The late 1800s saw a flurry of innovation by hundreds of companies battling to deliver on the promise of fast, efficient and reasonably-priced mechanical transportation. Ford later came to dominate the industry thanks to the development of the moving assembly line.

Today, the sector is poised for another breakthrough with the advent of cars that drive themselves. But unlike the original wave of automobile innovation, the race for supremacy in autonomous vehicles is concentrated among a few corporate giants. So who is set to dominate this time?

I’ve analyzed six companies we think are leading the race to build the first truly driverless car. Three of these—General Motors, Ford, and Volkswagen—come from the existing car industry and need to integrate self-driving technology into their existing fleet of mass-produced vehicles. The other three—Tesla, Uber, and Waymo (owned by the same company as Google)—are newcomers from the digital technology world of Silicon Valley and have to build a mass manufacturing capability.

While it’s impossible to know all the developments at any given time, we have tracked investments, strategic partnerships, and official press releases to learn more about what’s happening behind the scenes. The car industry typically rates self-driving technology on a scale from Level 0 (no automation) to Level 5 (full automation). We’ve assessed where each company is now and estimated how far they are from reaching the top level. Here’s how we think each player is performing.

Volkswagen
Volkswagen has invested in taxi-hailing app Gett and partnered with chip-maker Nvidia to develop an artificial intelligence co-pilot for its cars. In 2018, the VW Group is set to release the Audi A8, the first production vehicle that reaches Level 3 on the scale, “conditional driving automation.” This means the car’s computer will handle all driving functions, but a human has to be ready to take over if necessary.

Ford
Ford already sells cars with a Level 2 autopilot, “partial driving automation.” This means one or more aspects of driving are controlled by a computer based on information about the environment, for example combined cruise control and lane centering. Alongside other investments, the company has put $1 billion into Argo AI, an artificial intelligence company for self-driving vehicles. Following a trial to test pizza delivery using autonomous vehicles, Ford is now testing Level 4 cars on public roads. These feature “high automation,” where the car can drive entirely on its own but not in certain conditions such as when the road surface is poor or the weather is bad.

General Motors
GM also sells vehicles with Level 2 automation but, after buying Silicon Valley startup Cruise Automation in 2016, now plans to launch the first mass-production-ready Level 5 autonomy vehicle that drives completely on its own by 2019. The Cruise AV will have no steering wheel or pedals to allow a human to take over and be part of a large fleet of driverless taxis the company plans to operate in big cities. But crucially the company hasn’t yet secured permission to test the car on public roads.

Waymo (Google)

Waymo Level 5 testing. Image Credit: Waymo

Founded as a special project in 2009, Waymo separated from Google (though they’re both owned by the same parent firm, Alphabet) in 2016. Though it has never made, sold, or operated a car on a commercial basis, Waymo has created test vehicles that have clocked more than 4 million miles without human drivers as of November 2017. Waymo tested its Level 5 car, “Firefly,” between 2015 and 2017 but then decided to focus on hardware that could be installed in other manufacturers’ vehicles, starting with the Chrysler Pacifica.

Uber
The taxi-hailing app maker Uber has been testing autonomous cars on the streets of Pittsburgh since 2016, always with an employee behind the wheel ready to take over in case of a malfunction. After buying the self-driving truck company Otto in 2016 for a reported $680 million, Uber is now expanding its AI capabilities and plans to test NVIDIA’s latest chips in Otto’s vehicles. It has also partnered with Volvo to create a self-driving fleet of cars and with Toyota to co-create a ride-sharing autonomous vehicle.

Tesla
The first major car manufacturer to come from Silicon Valley, Tesla was also the first to introduce Level 2 autopilot back in 2015. The following year, it announced that all new Teslas would have the hardware for full autonomy, meaning once the software is finished it can be deployed on existing cars with an instant upgrade. Some experts have challenged this approach, arguing that the company has merely added surround cameras to its production cars that aren’t as capable as the laser-based sensing systems that most other carmakers are using.

But the company has collected data from hundreds of thousands of cars, driving millions of miles across all terrains. So, we shouldn’t dismiss the firm’s founder, Elon Musk, when he claims a Level 4 Tesla will drive from LA to New York without any human interference within the first half of 2018.

Winners

Who’s leading the race? Image Credit: IMD

At the moment, the disruptors like Tesla, Waymo, and Uber seem to have the upper hand. While the traditional automakers are focusing on bringing Level 3 and 4 partial automation to market, the new companies are leapfrogging them by moving more directly towards Level 5 full automation. Waymo may have the least experience of dealing with consumers in this sector, but it has already clocked up a huge amount of time testing some of the most advanced technology on public roads.

The incumbent carmakers are also focused on the difficult process of integrating new technology and business models into their existing manufacturing operations by buying up small companies. The challengers, on the other hand, are easily partnering with other big players including manufacturers to get the scale and expertise they need more quickly.

Tesla is building its own manufacturing capability but also collecting vast amounts of critical data that will enable it to more easily upgrade its cars when ready for full automation. In particular, Waymo’s experience, technology capability, and ability to secure solid partnerships puts it at the head of the pack.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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#431928 How Fast Is AI Progressing? Stanford’s ...

Posted on January 19, 2018 by Android

When? This is probably the question that futurists, AI experts, and even people with a keen interest in technology dread the most. It has proved famously difficult to predict when new developments in AI will take place. The scientists at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence in 1956 thought that perhaps two months would be enough to make “significant advances” in a whole range of complex problems, including computers that can understand language, improve themselves, and even understand abstract concepts.
Sixty years later, and these problems are not yet solved. The AI Index, from Stanford, is an attempt to measure how much progress has been made in artificial intelligence.
The index adopts a unique approach, and tries to aggregate data across many regimes. It contains Volume of Activity metrics, which measure things like venture capital investment, attendance at academic conferences, published papers, and so on. The results are what you might expect: tenfold increases in academic activity since 1996, an explosive growth in startups focused around AI, and corresponding venture capital investment. The issue with this metric is that it measures AI hype as much as AI progress. The two might be correlated, but then again, they may not.
The index also scrapes data from the popular coding website Github, which hosts more source code than anyone in the world. They can track the amount of AI-related software people are creating, as well as the interest levels in popular machine learning packages like Tensorflow and Keras. The index also keeps track of the sentiment of news articles that mention AI: surprisingly, given concerns about the apocalypse and an employment crisis, those considered “positive” outweigh the “negative” by three to one.
But again, this could all just be a measure of AI enthusiasm in general.
No one would dispute the fact that we’re in an age of considerable AI hype, but the progress of AI is littered by booms and busts in hype, growth spurts that alternate with AI winters. So the AI Index attempts to track the progress of algorithms against a series of tasks. How well does computer vision perform at the Large Scale Visual Recognition challenge? (Superhuman at annotating images since 2015, but they still can’t answer questions about images very well, combining natural language processing and image recognition). Speech recognition on phone calls is almost at parity.
In other narrow fields, AIs are still catching up to humans. Translation might be good enough that you can usually get the gist of what’s being said, but still scores poorly on the BLEU metric for translation accuracy. The AI index even keeps track of how well the programs can do on the SAT test, so if you took it, you can compare your score to an AI’s.
Measuring the performance of state-of-the-art AI systems on narrow tasks is useful and fairly easy to do. You can define a metric that’s simple to calculate, or devise a competition with a scoring system, and compare new software with old in a standardized way. Academics can always debate about the best method of assessing translation or natural language understanding. The Loebner prize, a simplified question-and-answer Turing Test, recently adopted Winograd Schema type questions, which rely on contextual understanding. AI has more difficulty with these.
Where the assessment really becomes difficult, though, is in trying to map these narrow-task performances onto general intelligence. This is hard because of a lack of understanding of our own intelligence. Computers are superhuman at chess, and now even a more complex game like Go. The braver predictors who came up with timelines thought AlphaGo’s success was faster than expected, but does this necessarily mean we’re closer to general intelligence than they thought?
Here is where it’s harder to track progress.
We can note the specialized performance of algorithms on tasks previously reserved for humans—for example, the index cites a Nature paper that shows AI can now predict skin cancer with more accuracy than dermatologists. We could even try to track one specific approach to general AI; for example, how many regions of the brain have been successfully simulated by a computer? Alternatively, we could simply keep track of the number of professions and professional tasks that can now be performed to an acceptable standard by AI.

“We are running a race, but we don’t know how to get to the endpoint, or how far we have to go.”

Progress in AI over the next few years is far more likely to resemble a gradual rising tide—as more and more tasks can be turned into algorithms and accomplished by software—rather than the tsunami of a sudden intelligence explosion or general intelligence breakthrough. Perhaps measuring the ability of an AI system to learn and adapt to the work routines of humans in office-based tasks could be possible.
The AI index doesn’t attempt to offer a timeline for general intelligence, as this is still too nebulous and confused a concept.
Michael Woodridge, head of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, notes, “The main reason general AI is not captured in the report is that neither I nor anyone else would know how to measure progress.” He is concerned about another AI winter, and overhyped “charlatans and snake-oil salesmen” exaggerating the progress that has been made.
A key concern that all the experts bring up is the ethics of artificial intelligence.
Of course, you don’t need general intelligence to have an impact on society; algorithms are already transforming our lives and the world around us. After all, why are Amazon, Google, and Facebook worth any money? The experts agree on the need for an index to measure the benefits of AI, the interactions between humans and AIs, and our ability to program values, ethics, and oversight into these systems.
Barbra Grosz of Harvard champions this view, saying, “It is important to take on the challenge of identifying success measures for AI systems by their impact on people’s lives.”
For those concerned about the AI employment apocalypse, tracking the use of AI in the fields considered most vulnerable (say, self-driving cars replacing taxi drivers) would be a good idea. Society’s flexibility for adapting to AI trends should be measured, too; are we providing people with enough educational opportunities to retrain? How about teaching them to work alongside the algorithms, treating them as tools rather than replacements? The experts also note that the data suffers from being US-centric.
We are running a race, but we don’t know how to get to the endpoint, or how far we have to go. We are judging by the scenery, and how far we’ve run already. For this reason, measuring progress is a daunting task that starts with defining progress. But the AI index, as an annual collection of relevant information, is a good start.
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#431899 Darker Still: Black Mirror’s New ...

Posted on January 10, 2018 by Android

The key difference between science fiction and fantasy is that science fiction is entirely possible because of its grounding in scientific facts, while fantasy is not. This is where Black Mirror is both an entertaining and terrifying work of science fiction. Created by Charlie Brooker, the anthological series tells cautionary tales of emerging technology that could one day be an integral part of our everyday lives.
While watching the often alarming episodes, one can’t help but recognize the eerie similarities to some of the tech tools that are already abundant in our lives today. In fact, many previous Black Mirror predictions are already becoming reality.
The latest season of Black Mirror was arguably darker than ever. This time, Brooker seemed to focus on the ethical implications of one particular area: neurotechnology.
Emerging Neurotechnology
Warning: The remainder of this article may contain spoilers from Season 4 of Black Mirror.
Most of the storylines from season four revolve around neurotechnology and brain-machine interfaces. They are based in a world where people have the power to upload their consciousness onto machines, have fully immersive experiences in virtual reality, merge their minds with other minds, record others’ memories, and even track what others are thinking, feeling, and doing.
How can all this ever be possible? Well, these capabilities are already being developed by pioneers and researchers globally. Early last year, Elon Musk unveiled Neuralink, a company whose goal is to merge the human mind with AI through a neural lace. We’ve already connected two brains via the internet, allowing one brain to communicate with another. Various research teams have been able to develop mechanisms for “reading minds” or reconstructing memories of individuals via devices. The list goes on.
With many of the technologies we see in Black Mirror it’s not a question of if, but when. Futurist Ray Kurzweil has predicted that by the 2030s we will be able to upload our consciousness onto the cloud via nanobots that will “provide full-immersion virtual reality from within the nervous system, provide direct brain-to-brain communication over the internet, and otherwise greatly expand human intelligence.” While other experts continue to challenge Kurzweil on the exact year we’ll accomplish this feat, with the current exponential growth of our technological capabilities, we’re on track to get there eventually.
Ethical Questions
As always, technology is only half the conversation. Equally fascinating are the many ethical and moral questions this topic raises.
For instance, with the increasing convergence of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, we have to ask ourselves if our morality from the physical world transfers equally into the virtual world. The first episode of season four, USS Calister, tells the story of a VR pioneer, Robert Daley, who creates breakthrough AI and VR to satisfy his personal frustrations and sexual urges. He uses the DNA of his coworkers (and their children) to re-create them digitally in his virtual world, to which he escapes to torture them, while they continue to be indifferent in the “real” world.
Audiences are left asking themselves: should what happens in the digital world be considered any less “real” than the physical world? How do we know if the individuals in the virtual world (who are ultimately based on algorithms) have true feelings or sentiments? Have they been developed to exhibit characteristics associated with suffering, or can they really feel suffering? Fascinatingly, these questions point to the hard problem of consciousness—the question of if, why, and how a given physical process generates the specific experience it does—which remains a major mystery in neuroscience.
Towards the end of USS Calister, the hostages of Daley’s virtual world attempt to escape through suicide, by committing an act that will delete the code that allows them to exist. This raises yet another mind-boggling ethical question: if we “delete” code that signifies a digital being, should that be considered murder (or suicide, in this case)? Why shouldn’t it? When we murder someone we are, in essence, taking away their capacity to live and to be, without their consent. By unplugging a self-aware AI, wouldn’t we be violating its basic right to live in the same why? Does AI, as code, even have rights?
Brain implants can also have a radical impact on our self-identity and how we define the word “I”. In the episode Black Museum, instead of witnessing just one horror, we get a series of scares in little segments. One of those segments tells the story of a father who attempts to reincarnate the mother of his child by uploading her consciousness into his mind and allowing her to live in his head (essentially giving him multiple personality disorder). In this way, she can experience special moments with their son.
With “no privacy for him, and no agency for her” the good intention slowly goes very wrong. This story raises a critical question: should we be allowed to upload consciousness into limited bodies? Even more, if we are to upload our minds into “the cloud,” at what point do we lose our individuality to become one collective being?
These questions can form the basis of hours of debate, but we’re just getting started. There are no right or wrong answers with many of these moral dilemmas, but we need to start having such discussions.
The Downside of Dystopian Sci-Fi
Like last season’s San Junipero, one episode of the series, Hang the DJ, had an uplifting ending. Yet the overwhelming majority of the stories in Black Mirror continue to focus on the darkest side of human nature, feeding into the pre-existing paranoia of the general public. There is certainly some value in this; it’s important to be aware of the dangers of technology. After all, what better way to explore these dangers before they occur than through speculative fiction?
A big takeaway from every tale told in the series is that the greatest threat to humanity does not come from technology, but from ourselves. Technology itself is not inherently good or evil; it all comes down to how we choose to use it as a society. So for those of you who are techno-paranoid, beware, for it’s not the technology you should fear, but the humans who get their hands on it.
While we can paint negative visions for the future, though, it is also important to paint positive ones. The kind of visions we set for ourselves have the power to inspire and motivate generations. Many people are inherently pessimistic when thinking about the future, and that pessimism in turn can shape their contributions to humanity.
While utopia may not exist, the future of our species could and should be one of solving global challenges, abundance, prosperity, liberation, and cosmic transcendence. Now that would be a thrilling episode to watch.
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#431866 The Technologies We’ll Have Our Eyes ...

Posted on December 31, 2017 by Android

It’s that time of year again when our team has a little fun and throws on our futurist glasses to look ahead at some of the technologies and trends we’re most anticipating next year.
Whether the implications of a technology are vast or it resonates with one of us personally, here’s the list from some of the Singularity Hub team of what we have our eyes on as we enter the new year.
For a little refresher, these were the technologies our team was fired up about at the start of 2017.
Tweet us the technology you’re excited to watch in 2018 at @SingularityHub.
Cryptocurrency and Blockchain
“Given all the noise Bitcoin is making globally in the media, it is driving droves of main street investors to dabble in and learn more about cryptocurrencies. This will continue to raise valuations and drive adoption of blockchain. From Bank of America recently getting a blockchain-based patent approved to the Australian Securities Exchange’s plan to use blockchain, next year is going to be chock-full of these stories. Coindesk even recently spotted a patent filing from Apple involving blockchain. From ‘China’s Ethereum’, NEO, to IOTA to Golem to Qtum, there are a lot of interesting cryptos to follow given the immense numbers of potential applications. Hang on, it’s going to be a bumpy ride in 2018!”
–Kirk Nankivell, Website Manager
There Is No One Technology to Watch
“Next year may be remembered for advances in gene editing, blockchain, AI—or most likely all these and more. There is no single technology to watch. A number of consequential trends are advancing and converging. This general pace of change is exciting, and it also contributes to spiking anxiety. Technology’s invisible lines of force are extending further and faster into our lives and subtly subverting how we view the world and each other in unanticipated ways. Still, all the near-term messiness and volatility, the little and not-so-little dramas, the hype and disillusion, the controversies and conflict, all that smooths out a bit when you take a deep breath and a step back, and it’s my sincere hope and belief the net result will be more beneficial than harmful.”
–Jason Dorrier, Managing Editor
‘Fake News’ Fighting Technology
“It’s been a wild ride for the media this year with the term ‘fake news’ moving from the public’s peripheral and into mainstream vocabulary. The spread of ‘fake news’ is often blamed on media outlets, but social media platforms and search engines are often responsible too. (Facebook still won’t identify as a media company—maybe next year?) Yes, technology can contribute to spreading false information, but it can also help stop it. From technologists who are building in-article ‘trust indicator’ features, to artificial intelligence systems that can both spot and shut down fake news early on, I’m hopeful we can create new solutions to this huge problem. One step further: if publishers step up to fix this we might see some faith restored in the media.”
–Alison E. Berman, Digital Producer
Pay-as-You-Go Home Solar Power
“People in rural African communities are increasingly bypassing electrical grids (which aren’t even an option in many cases) and installing pay-as-you-go solar panels on their homes. The companies offering these services are currently not subject to any regulations, though they’re essentially acting as a utility. As demand for power grows, they’ll have to come up with ways to efficiently scale, and to balance the humanitarian and capitalistic aspects of their work. It’s fascinating to think traditional grids may never be necessary in many areas of the continent thanks to this technology.”
–Vanessa Bates Ramirez, Associate Editor
Virtual Personal Assistants
“AI is clearly going to rule our lives, and in many ways it already makes us look like clumsy apes. Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant are promising first steps toward a world of computers that understand us and relate to us on an emotional level. I crave the day when my Apple Watch coaches me into healthier habits, lets me know about new concerts nearby, speaks to my self-driving Lyft on my behalf, and can help me respond effectively to aggravating emails based on communication patterns. But let’s not brush aside privacy concerns and the implications of handing over our personal data to megacorporations. The scariest thing here is that privacy laws and advertising ethics do not accommodate this level of intrusive data hoarding.”
–Matthew Straub, Director of Digital Engagement (Hub social media)
Solve for Learning: Educational Apps for Children in Conflict Zones
“I am most excited by exponential technology when it is used to help solve a global grand challenge. Educational apps are currently being developed to help solve for learning by increasing accessibility to learning opportunities for children living in conflict zones. Many children in these areas are not receiving an education, with girls being 2.5 times more likely than boys to be out of school. The EduApp4Syria project is developing apps to help children in Syria and Kashmir learn in their native languages. Mobile phones are increasingly available in these areas, and the apps are available offline for children who do not have consistent access to mobile networks. The apps are low-cost, easily accessible, and scalable educational opportunities.
–Paige Wilcoxson, Director, Curriculum & Learning Design
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#431599 8 Ways AI Will Transform Our Cities by ...

Posted on November 25, 2017 by Android

How will AI shape the average North American city by 2030? A panel of experts assembled as part of a century-long study into the impact of AI thinks its effects will be profound.
The One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence is the brainchild of Eric Horvitz, technical fellow and a managing director at Microsoft Research.
Every five years a panel of experts will assess the current state of AI and its future directions. The first panel, comprised of experts in AI, law, political science, policy, and economics, was launched last fall and decided to frame their report around the impact AI will have on the average American city. Here’s how they think it will affect eight key domains of city life in the next fifteen years.
1. Transportation
The speed of the transition to AI-guided transport may catch the public by surprise. Self-driving vehicles will be widely adopted by 2020, and it won’t just be cars — driverless delivery trucks, autonomous delivery drones, and personal robots will also be commonplace.
Uber-style “cars as a service” are likely to replace car ownership, which may displace public transport or see it transition towards similar on-demand approaches. Commutes will become a time to relax or work productively, encouraging people to live further from home, which could combine with reduced need for parking to drastically change the face of modern cities.
Mountains of data from increasing numbers of sensors will allow administrators to model individuals’ movements, preferences, and goals, which could have major impact on the design city infrastructure.
Humans won’t be out of the loop, though. Algorithms that allow machines to learn from human input and coordinate with them will be crucial to ensuring autonomous transport operates smoothly. Getting this right will be key as this will be the public’s first experience with physically embodied AI systems and will strongly influence public perception.
2. Home and Service Robots
Robots that do things like deliver packages and clean offices will become much more common in the next 15 years. Mobile chipmakers are already squeezing the power of last century’s supercomputers into systems-on-a-chip, drastically boosting robots’ on-board computing capacity.
Cloud-connected robots will be able to share data to accelerate learning. Low-cost 3D sensors like Microsoft’s Kinect will speed the development of perceptual technology, while advances in speech comprehension will enhance robots’ interactions with humans. Robot arms in research labs today are likely to evolve into consumer devices around 2025.
But the cost and complexity of reliable hardware and the difficulty of implementing perceptual algorithms in the real world mean general-purpose robots are still some way off. Robots are likely to remain constrained to narrow commercial applications for the foreseeable future.
3. Healthcare
AI’s impact on healthcare in the next 15 years will depend more on regulation than technology. The most transformative possibilities of AI in healthcare require access to data, but the FDA has failed to find solutions to the difficult problem of balancing privacy and access to data. Implementation of electronic health records has also been poor.
If these hurdles can be cleared, AI could automate the legwork of diagnostics by mining patient records and the scientific literature. This kind of digital assistant could allow doctors to focus on the human dimensions of care while using their intuition and experience to guide the process.
At the population level, data from patient records, wearables, mobile apps, and personal genome sequencing will make personalized medicine a reality. While fully automated radiology is unlikely, access to huge datasets of medical imaging will enable training of machine learning algorithms that can “triage” or check scans, reducing the workload of doctors.
Intelligent walkers, wheelchairs, and exoskeletons will help keep the elderly active while smart home technology will be able to support and monitor them to keep them independent. Robots may begin to enter hospitals carrying out simple tasks like delivering goods to the right room or doing sutures once the needle is correctly placed, but these tasks will only be semi-automated and will require collaboration between humans and robots.
4. Education
The line between the classroom and individual learning will be blurred by 2030. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) will interact with intelligent tutors and other AI technologies to allow personalized education at scale. Computer-based learning won’t replace the classroom, but online tools will help students learn at their own pace using techniques that work for them.
AI-enabled education systems will learn individuals’ preferences, but by aggregating this data they’ll also accelerate education research and the development of new tools. Online teaching will increasingly widen educational access, making learning lifelong, enabling people to retrain, and increasing access to top-quality education in developing countries.
Sophisticated virtual reality will allow students to immerse themselves in historical and fictional worlds or explore environments and scientific objects difficult to engage with in the real world. Digital reading devices will become much smarter too, linking to supplementary information and translating between languages.
5. Low-Resource Communities
In contrast to the dystopian visions of sci-fi, by 2030 AI will help improve life for the poorest members of society. Predictive analytics will let government agencies better allocate limited resources by helping them forecast environmental hazards or building code violations. AI planning could help distribute excess food from restaurants to food banks and shelters before it spoils.
Investment in these areas is under-funded though, so how quickly these capabilities will appear is uncertain. There are fears valueless machine learning could inadvertently discriminate by correlating things with race or gender, or surrogate factors like zip codes. But AI programs are easier to hold accountable than humans, so they’re more likely to help weed out discrimination.
6. Public Safety and Security
By 2030 cities are likely to rely heavily on AI technologies to detect and predict crime. Automatic processing of CCTV and drone footage will make it possible to rapidly spot anomalous behavior. This will not only allow law enforcement to react quickly but also forecast when and where crimes will be committed. Fears that bias and error could lead to people being unduly targeted are justified, but well-thought-out systems could actually counteract human bias and highlight police malpractice.
Techniques like speech and gait analysis could help interrogators and security guards detect suspicious behavior. Contrary to concerns about overly pervasive law enforcement, AI is likely to make policing more targeted and therefore less overbearing.
7. Employment and Workplace
The effects of AI will be felt most profoundly in the workplace. By 2030 AI will be encroaching on skilled professionals like lawyers, financial advisers, and radiologists. As it becomes capable of taking on more roles, organizations will be able to scale rapidly with relatively small workforces.
AI is more likely to replace tasks rather than jobs in the near term, and it will also create new jobs and markets, even if it’s hard to imagine what those will be right now. While it may reduce incomes and job prospects, increasing automation will also lower the cost of goods and services, effectively making everyone richer.
These structural shifts in the economy will require political rather than purely economic responses to ensure these riches are shared. In the short run, this may include resources being pumped into education and re-training, but longer term may require a far more comprehensive social safety net or radical approaches like a guaranteed basic income.
8. Entertainment
Entertainment in 2030 will be interactive, personalized, and immeasurably more engaging than today. Breakthroughs in sensors and hardware will see virtual reality, haptics and companion robots increasingly enter the home. Users will be able to interact with entertainment systems conversationally, and they will show emotion, empathy, and the ability to adapt to environmental cues like the time of day.
Social networks already allow personalized entertainment channels, but the reams of data being collected on usage patterns and preferences will allow media providers to personalize entertainment to unprecedented levels. There are concerns this could endow media conglomerates with unprecedented control over people’s online experiences and the ideas to which they are exposed.
But advances in AI will also make creating your own entertainment far easier and more engaging, whether by helping to compose music or choreograph dances using an avatar. Democratizing the production of high-quality entertainment makes it nearly impossible to predict how highly fluid human tastes for entertainment will develop.
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