'We are only just dipping our toes into the vast ocean of AI and the benefits it can offer'

Terminators roaming vast wastelands, crazed computers trapping astronauts, central intelligences instigating World War III. These are just some of the scenarios that Hollywood has dreamt up, which are giving artificial intelligence (AI) a bad name.

Weve even seen Stephen Hawking express his doubts about AI, saying: Creating AI will be the biggest event in human history it might also be the last. It seems that a notion has developed that robots and the AI behind them are out to get us. Or, at the very least, our jobs.

So how accurate is the glitz and glam of Hollywood, or indeed the doom and gloom of Professor Hawking? Its easy to get caught up in the apocalyptic view Hollywood presents, but the reality, as you would expect, is very different AI actually offers many benefits.

>See also:How artificial intelligence will make humans smarter

Plus, the most optimistic predictions suggest a genuinely freethinking artificial intelligence is decades if not centuries away, and a consensus on whether workers will eventually be replaced by synthetic replicants is even more distant.

The truth of the matter is that we are only just dipping our toes into the vast ocean of AI and the benefits it can offer. Most of us will be familiar with Apples Siri or Microsofts Cortana, personal assistants that live on our smartphones and scrape the internet for information before making recommendations based on available data. At the moment, these digital assistants are just that: assistants helpful when asked to be helpful, but little more and certainly not freethinking.

Working purely in a reactive way, this technology is designed to augment our own knowledge. Whether its double checking how you should rewire a plug, choosing the best route to take, or getting a little extra team support in a pub quiz, these applications are slowly becoming more and more useful. The early generations of these technologies have proven to be hugely popular and as a consequence we are seeing something of a progression from reactive service.

Rather than simply existing as audio versions of search engines, algorithms are being developed that can learn trends and styles. For example, if you are using the assistant to plot routes that you need to take, the technology can adapt to live information and make suggestions based on real-time information. This technology really is in its infancy, but it is something that is increasingly coming up within senior meetings at big enterprise companies.

As such, the incorporation of AI into our working lives is something CIOs and IT managers are trying to wrap their arms around at the moment. Many are already contemplating how it will form a part of their IT strategies in the years to come.

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Don't worry, artificial intelligence is not a job stealer its a job enabler