Electrif-AI-NG!

“AI is the new electricity,” is the favorite saying of Andrew Ng –  one of the most prominent people in the world of AI who led AI teams at both Google and its Chinese counterpart, Baidu. He is confident that AI will change our world to the same degree as the advent of steam engines, electricity or computers did in the past.

THE REALITY

For many people, the first association when thinking about AI is androids from “Blade Runner” or “The Terminator” (franchise) movies. The reality is not that spectacular. AI is just algorithms allowing computers to perform certain intellectual activities of a human. As simple as playing tic-tac-toe or as complex as piloting an autonomous vehicle. The algorithms are designed by humans and automatically trained to perform specific tasks based on the patterns found in a massive amount of data used for learning.

What we have today is artificial narrow intelligence (ANI) – a system that can perform a single intellectual task that a human can do, like playing chess or posting invoices to a correct account and a cost center. We are still very far away from artificial general intelligence (AGI) – a machine that can perform any intellectual task of a human. This is still science-fiction.

AI 5-0 HUMAN

Electricity can save a life when used to supply a defibrillator. But the high voltage can be deadly. Similarly, AI’s applications vary from medicine to military. Most likely, Covid-19 vaccine development would not have been finished without the support of AI models that allowed the researchers to analyze a huge amount of virus data and predict its RNA sequence. On the opposite side, we are not so far from the advent of fully autonomous lethal weapon systems performing better than humans. A few months ago, in a final round of a competition organized by the United States Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), an AI algorithm won five times in a row against an experienced F-16 pilot in simulated aerial combat.

It is forecasted that by the end of this decade, AI will deliver additional economic value measured globally in trillions of US dollars. Moreover, according to predictions, within 10-20 years, it would be technically possible for machines to do around half of the jobs in the US. It does not mean that human jobs will be replaced but they could. Probably due to the social impact, it will not happen.

‘RULER OF THE WORLD’

The importance of AI goes beyond its impact on business and the economy. It will be one of the most important areas of the growing rivalry between the US and China in the next years. These two superpowers are already far ahead of all other countries in this field. Most of the top world researchers in AI are working for high-tech American companies, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. However, their Chinese counterparts – Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent – are equally advanced. Today it’s difficult to predict who will finally win this race. Developing AI systems requires data. Plenty of data. Chinese regulations on data protection are not as strict as American, not to mention European, which – when combined with 1 billion internet users in China – gives that country a huge advantage.

Other countries, although far behind the US and China in this race, are also aware of the potential AI impact. The words of Russian President Vladimir Putin that the nation that leads in AI will be the ruler of the world may turn out to be true soon.

So, is AI indeed the new electricity?  Either way, its future will be electrifying.