If you are looking for an answer to the question What is Artificial Intelligence? and you only have a minute, then here's the definition the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence offers on its home page: "the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines."
However, if you are fortunate enough to have more than a minute, then please get ready to embark upon an exciting journey exploring AI (but beware, it could last a lifetime) …
Hillary Clinton has warned that the US is "totally unprepared" for the economic and societal effects of artificial intelligence. Speaking to radio host Hugh Hewitt this week in an interview promoting her recent book, the former Secretary of State said the world was "racing headfirst into a new era of artificial intelligence" that would affect "how we live, how we think, [and] how we relate to each other." In a short segment near the end of the interview, Clinton told Hewitt: "A lot of really smart people, you know, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, a lot of really smart people are sounding an alarm that we're not hearing. And their alarm is artificial intelligence is not our friend." Clinton then mentioned two specific areas of impact: digital surveillance (when "everything we know and everything we say and everything we write is, you know, recorded somewhere") and job automation.
In July, we surveyed 1,600 Quartz readers--from 84 countries, though the majority of those who chose to take part came from the US--for their opinions about artificial intelligence, including about their perceptions of job loss to AI and robots. People were anxious; 90% of responders thought that up to half of jobs would be lost to automation within five years. That's a lot, more than most of the studies conclude, include studies conducted by Oxford University (pdf) and McKinsey Global Institute. But, paradoxically, we found that everyone thought it was going to happen to someone else. In our survey, 91% don't think there's any risk to their job and 94% don't think they'll be working for an AI boss--but 48% think they'll have an AI employee (all within five years).
I am a technology anthropologist who examines automation, algorithms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the context of preserving human agency. My dissertation focused on small independent fringe new technology makers in Silicon Valley, what they are making, and most critically, how the adoption of the outcomes of their efforts impact society and culture locally, and/or globally. I'm currently spending the summer in a corporate AI Research Group where I contribute to anthropological research on AI. I'm thrilled to blog for the renowned Savage Minds this month and hope many of you find value in my contributions. There is so much going on in the world that it is challenging to choose a single topic to write about--floods, fires, hurricanes, politics--as anthropologists in 2017, we are spoiled for choice.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fast becoming a mainstream element of business, a trend that is clearly visible in the APAC markets. While the larger Asian economies like India and China have the privilege of humungous data, Singapore and Australia have a clear roadmap for leveraging their strong R&D capabilities for AI advancement. The applications of AI differ by demographics, ranging from financial services to logistics to healthcare and more recently, talent management. Singapore is turning to AI to future-proof its economy against its core challenges- an ageing population and human-resource constrained economy. The wide presence of knowledge-intensive industries is compelling the government to explore automation and AI-led avenues to manage talent better.
Technologies such as digital, big data, Artificial Intelligence, automation and machine learning are increasingly shaping future of work and jobs. Despite concerns about humans losing their jobs to automation, the fact remains that future of jobs has never been brighter, according to Manish Bahl, Senior Director, Centre for the Future of Work, Cognizant Technology Solutions. Work has always changed, and will continue to change. While work that is tedious and repetitive will get automated, machines will always need humans. It would be naïve to underestimate human imagination or ingenuity.
Then we internals took over and tried to add new features, while not breaking the existing ones… …today the monolith is still in place, but most of its functionality has been replaced by micro services communicating via asynchronous messaging and deliver their own frontends. In this session we will talk about challenges we faced over the past three years, about the "best practices" that failed while scaling up from 0 to 40 teams and the new challenges we are facing today. In BDD the formalized examples use a natural language-based DSL driven by the Given/When/Then keywords. At the same time, property-based testing (PBT) uses abstract (mathematical) formulas to declare expectations for the output values given some constraints on the input. The PBT tools try to disproof that the application fulfills these requirements by taking samples from the valid input value space.
The pace of change in today's world of business and IT operations is astounding. "Digital," "Platform," and "Automation" are most frequently used words that clients hear from their service providers and advisors but there is no common understanding or definition behind these. While our industry continues to accelerate the build-out of these capabilities, client adoption and satisfaction is still lagging. One of the primary reasons is the lack of a common understanding or a unifying framework. The "Triple A Trifecta" (See Exhibit 1) of Robotic Automation, Smart Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence aims to provide a clear and crisp articulation of the emerging change agents for clients to optimize, renovate, or transform their business operations.
You probably won't be replaced in the office by an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm tomorrow, but get ready to pick up some new skills to make yourself useful as more human tasks become automated, a panel of experts cautioned at IT World Canada's Technicity event Dec. 12. The rapid adoption of AI by many industries has some concerned that we're at the start of a big transformation in the workplace. One in which many people will find themselves out of work and replaced by a robot, or a piece of software. A panel of experts that are either running AI-based companies or work with them closely talked about the benefits and challenges of the impending shift. Any shift that results in the elimination of jobs isn't going to happen overnight, he said.
Just to let you know, if you buy something featured here, Mashable might earn an affiliate commission. There's a lot we don't know about the future, but it's a pretty good bet that many of our systems and infrastructure will be automated. From thermostats to speakers to robot butlers, the Utopian version of Terminator 2 is almost becoming a reality. And the best part is, you don't have to be a fancy scientist to take advantage of this new era. This five-course bundle teaches you enough to hit the ground running and become an automation machine.
Many of the technology trends that drove us into 2017 will continue into 2018: connected devices, digital transformation, the internet of things (IoT), machine learning, artificial intelligence, and automation. These hot-button issues will remain part of the technology vocabulary in 2018 and beyond. Where I see a substantive difference is in the union of the technologies. AI and IoT are transformative by themselves; now imagine digital transformation in a connected and automated world empowered by an artificial intelligence of things. Going into 2018, I see two common technology characteristics: intelligence and automation.