Ghost of AI Past
As we are all quite aware, artificial intelligence has been a topic of many books, comics, movies, and everything, pretty much from the moment the ‘machine’ stepped into place – perhaps correlating with the Industrial revolution.
Industrial revolution, on certain plain, may be looked as a beginning of some sort of the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’, but not in today’s sense – rather than at a certain ‘fear’ that is present when it comes to machines ‘taking over’ something – may that be workplaces, or the world these days.
Of course, Industrial revolution, introduction of automation into the factories did, indeed, made quite a few places redundant, with the machines substituting the manpower but, on the other hand, also opened up a few new – at least when it comes to supporting those very same machines. Fear of change, and potential automation, indeed. As human beings we do tend, on a certain level, to fear the change, and the unknown. Unknown, in this case, was potential fear of replacing us with the machines, and leaving us out of the necessary means for existence, as defined today.
However, after the initial shock, and the introduction of the machines where manual labor was – we did, overall, one thing that our species are known for: adapt. We evolved, learned new skills, and managed to work in harmony with the machines. Also, as we moved forward, we let the machines near, and into our homes: cars, TV’s, washing machines, etc. Bit by bit we let them closer and closer to us, and not noticing, at the very same time, that they have become an integral part of our life and almost a soon-to-be necessity.
Current State of AI
As we did a spin on things, and slightly did a comparison of AI with the Industrial revolution, it very well may be that – the next part of our EVOLUTION. AI, at least at the current state, shouldn’t be looked at as a treat (although, all of us did see quite a few movies on that topic 😊), but rather as a help (like it was with the industrial revolution) where AI could help extend our reach even further – perhaps to a different industries, and planets?
We can see, these days, that more and more companies – may they be in IT, or not – do introduce a separate ‘AI Department’ and even Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer (CAIO) – something that hasn’t been known until quite recently. This just adds up to the importance of AI, and potential where it all can be implemented.
Besides AI being present in IT/Dev companies, it is getting bigger and bigger footprint into operations, as it can influence and, potentially, predict the needed outcomes, business needs, and similar.
In this case, when you want to combine AI and business aspects, you need to have stakeholders that understand both sides – AI/IT and Business side of things, so that it can work as its intended to be.
Future of AI
Are there potential threats if AI is not being handled correctly, and pushed in the right direction? Sure – as it is the case with any new technology, and implementation of it, and we have witnessed that numerous times so far, unfortunately. However, this fear of the unknown shouldn’t be present more, or less, with the AI as it was with any other new technology or thing, in general. If mishandled, anything can be misused, and AI is no exception to that, of course.
However, we are far from the possibility of machines taking over the world, and waking up in some post-apocalyptic scenario, as it has been mentioned a few times now.
With this technology, we are still at the tip of the iceberg, and we are in the process of learning, and further evolving it – if anything, and similar to Machine Learning – it needs to be trained, and we are the ones who will train it, but there is a great potential to it, and more and more companies, and businesses are taking this more and more serious.
Conclusion
We are still, at the very beginning of AI evolution and this might be the next industrial revolution also given the possibilities for further machine automation and fields where this technology can be applied. Furthermore, this does provide interesting spin on things: first came the introduction of the machines, and afterwards came the implementation of the thoughts and/or processes into them – we may call it Industrial Revolution Version 2.0 easily.
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