John Hopton for redOrbit.com @Johnfinitum

In part one of our look at the future of artificial intelligence, expert Charlie Ortiz told us that to envision a future in which machines transcend their programming and become a problem is too negative a view to take, despite such suggestions from high profile figures like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk.

Ortiz also said that machines with intelligence to rival our own were nowhere near being a reality. In this follow-up piece, well find out what the more realistic, short-term future of AI will look like, and what sort of exciting new uses we can look forward to.

In terms of the near future what youll see are intelligent assistants becoming smarter and smarter, said Ortiz, who is Senior Principal Manager of the Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Group within Nuances Natural Language and AI Laboratory. They will help us in everyday tasks, making our lives less stressful and getting rid of the drudgery of day-to-day life.

An assistant could efficiently direct our chores around town during a Saturday, leaving more free time for ourselves, and then plan a night out thats going to go smoothly instead of being wasted through poor organization (so we can get wasted through efficient organization).

One of the major steps will be to improve the way in which AI systems understand language. Up to now they have learned to recognize sounds, but they dont necessarily understand meaning.

For instance, says Ortiz: You might want to tell your self-driving car take me to the park near the grocery store without having to give it a specific address. That ability to refer to things in the world and what you want a device to do in abstract terms, like we do as humans, is something that a lot of people are working on.

Testing the common sense of AI

Some of those people might take Nuances Winograd Schema Challenge. The test aims to measure the common sense knowledge of new technology, which really is essential for true AI.

Ortiz explains: If I tell my personal assistant Id like you to book a reservation for dinner after my meeting and it goes and makes a reservation for next week, technically it is not incorrect because next week is after my meeting, but its not what you meant. But, he continues, If I tell my son make sure you do your homework after you get home from school and he later says Yeah, I was gonna do it next week Id get very angry! We want our machines to have that kind of common sense (without that kind of childhood sneakiness).

Read more:

The future of artificial intelligence Part II: Smarter and smarter