Category Archives: Ai

In Brief Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, used a data set of information on more than a thousand objects to successfully train a deep learning system to pick up unfamiliar objects in the "real world."

While some researchers attempt to build artificial intelligences (AI) that can solve problems that humans might not have even thought of yet, others are focused on creating ones that do something most of us take for granted: pick things up.

For a robot, knowing how to properly grasp and lift an object is no easy task. To address this issue, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, trained a deep learning system on a cloud-based data set of more than a thousand objects, exposing it to each ones 3D shape and appearance, as well of the physics of grasping it.

Afterward, they tested their system using physical objects that werent included in its digital training set. When the system thought it had a better than 50 percent chance of successfully picking up a new object, it was actually able to do it 98 percent of the time all without having trained on any objects outside of the virtual world.

The researchers have submitted their work for publication. They plan to publicly release their data set, which should help others create their own dexterous robots and perhaps even inspire a few innovators to think of other ways to use the virtual world for training AI systems.

Its hard to collect large data sets of robotic data, Stefanie Tellex, an assistant professor specializing in robot learning at Brown University,explained to MIT Technology Review. This paper is exciting because it shows that a simulated data set can be used to train a model for grasping. And this model translates to real successes on a physical robot.

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An AI Robot Learned How to Pick up Objects After Training Only in the Virtual World - Futurism

In BriefAI is becoming more and more ubiquitous, with reports ofadvancements or new applications coming almost daily. How much dowe know about how it thinks, and how are we trying to find outmore? AI as We Understand It

Most of the AI we know today operates on a principle of deep learning: a machine is given a set of data and a desired output, and from that it produces its own algorithm to solve it. The system then repeats, perpetuating itself. This is called a neural network. It is necessary to use this method to create AI, as a computer can code faster than a human; it would take lifetimes to code it manually.

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT Tommi Jaakkola says, If you had a very small neural network, you might be able to understand it. But once it becomes very large, and it has thousands of units per layer and maybe hundreds of layers, then it becomes quite un-understandable. We are at the stage of these large systems now. So, in order to make these machines explain themselves an issue that will have to be solved before we can place any trust in them what methods are we using?

1. Reversing the algorithms.Inimage recognition, this involves programming the machine to produce or modify pictures when the computer recognizes a pattern it has learned. Take the example of a Deep Dream modification of The Creation of Adam, where the AI has been told to put dogs in where it recognizes them. From this, we can learn what constitutes a dog for the A.I: firstly, it only produces heads (meaning this is what largely characterizes a dog, according to it) and secondly, the patterns that the computer recognizes as dogs are clustered around Adam (on the left) and God (on the right).

2. Identifying the data it has used. This process of understanding AI gives AI the command to record extracts and highlight the sections of text that it has used according to the pattern it was told to recognize. Developed first by Regina Barzilay, a Delta Electronics Professor at MIT, this type of understanding applies to AIs that search for patterns in data and make predictions accordingly. Carlos Guestrin, a Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Washington, has developed a similar system that presents the data with a short explanation as to why it was chosen.

3. Monitoring individual neurons. Developed by Jason Yosinski, a Machine Learning Researcher at Uber A.I Labs, this involves using a probe and measuring which image stimulates the neuron the most. This allows us to deduce what the AI looks for the most through a process of deduction.

These methods, though, are proving largely ineffective;as Guestrin says, We havent achieved the whole dream, which is where AI has a conversation with you, and it is able to explain. Were a long way from having truly interpretable AI.

It is important to understand how these systems work, as they are already being applied to industries including medicine, cars, finance, and recruitment: areas that have fundamental impacts on our lives. To give this massive power to something we dont understand could be a foolhardy exercise in trust. This is, of course, providing that the AI is honest, and does not suffer from the lapses in truth and perception that humans do.

At the heart of the problem with trying to understand the machines is a tension.If we could predict them perfectly, it would rob AI of the autonomous intelligence that characterizes it. We must remember that we dont know how humans make these decisions either; consciousness remains a mystery, and the world remains an interesting place because of it.

Daniel Dennet warns, though, that one question needs to be answered before AI is introduced: What standards do we demand of them, and of ourselves? How will we design the machines that will soon control our world without us understanding them how do we code our gods?

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We Still Know Very Little About How AI Thinks - Futurism

Robots are great at doing things theyve been shown how to do, but when presented with a novel problem, such as an unfamiliar shape that needs to be gripped, they tend to choke. AI is helping there in the form of systems like Dex-Net, which uses deep learning to let a robotic arm improvise an effective grip for objects its never seen before.

The basic idea behind the system is rather like how we figure out how to pick things up. You see an object, understand its shape and compare it to other objects youve picked up in the past, then use that information to choose the best way to grab it.

Dex-Net doesnt have the advantage of being a living person with eyes and a memory, so its creators gave it more than six million artificial 3D representations of objects and had it work out the best way, theoretically, to pick up each. In real life, the system looks at an object, compares its point cloud to those in its memory and picks what it thinks is the closest fit.

The researchers presented Dex-Net with dozens of objects it hadnt seen before, and its chosen grip only failed one time. That suggests the system is fairly robust despite being trained on synthetic data plus, it comes up with its candidate grip in an average of less than a second.

Dex-Net is the product of Berkeley roboticists, who are set to present the latest version of the system at a conference in July. They also plan to release the data set of objects and point clouds theyve amassed.

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This robot arm's AI thinks like we do about how to grab something ... - TechCrunch

Googles AlphaGo the AI developed to tackle the worlds most demanding strategy game is stepping downfrom competitive matches after defeating the worlds best talent. The latest to succumb isGostop-ranked player,Ke Jie, who lost 3-0 in a series hosted in China this week.

The AI, developedby London-based DeepMind, which wasacquired by Google for around $500 million in 2014,also overcomea team of five top playersduring a week of matches. AlphaGofirst drew headlines last year when it beatformer Go world champion Lee Sedol, and theChina event took things to the next level with matches against19-year-old Jie, and doubles with and against other top Go pros.

Challengers defeated,AlphaGohas cast its last competitive stone, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis explained.

This weeks series of thrilling games with the worlds best players, in the country where Go originated, has been the highest possible pinnacle for AlphaGo as a competitive program. For that reason, the Future of Go Summit is our final match event with AlphaGo.

The research team behind AlphaGo will now throw their energy into the next set of grand challenges, developing advanced general algorithms that could one day help scientists as they tackle some of our most complex problems, such as finding new cures for diseases, dramatically reducing energy consumption, or inventing revolutionary new materials.

Go is revered as the planets most demanding strategy game, and thats why it made for an ideal field to both develop AI technology and plot machines against humans. Beyond Google, Tencent is among other tech firmsto have unleashed AIs on the game. While it whips up curiosity and attention,the game simple servesas a stepping stone for future plans which is why DeepMind says it is moving on.

Indeed, the British companyhas already made a foray into more practical everyday solutions. Last year, it agreed to a data-sharing partnership with the UKs National Health Service, however the partnership has been criticized for givinga for-profit company access topersonally identifiable health data of around1.6 million NHS patients.The original arrangement remainsunder investigation by the UKs data protection watchdog, the ICO.

Those snafus arent a reflection on the technology itself, however, andHassabis remains bullishon the impact his firm can make.

If AI systems prove they are able to unearth significant new knowledge and strategies in these domains too, the breakthroughs could be truly remarkable. We cant wait to see what comes next, he said.

While AlphaGo is bowing out at the top, it isnt done with Go altogether. DeepMind is planning to publish a final review paper on how the AI developed since its matches with Lee Sedol last year. It is also developinga teaching tool to help newcomers pick up the ropes of the highlycomplicated game, and to enable more experienced handsto learnthe new and innovative moves that Go has introduced. Top players, even Ke Jie himself, studied up on AlphaGos moves andadded someto their arsenal.

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After beating the world's elite Go players, Google's AlphaGo AI is retiring - TechCrunch

At Soul Machines, a company that uses artificial intelligenceto create lifelike avatars that respond to human emotion, a fair amountof their work could be considered unsettling to the average person who fears the coming takeover by our AI-robot overlords.

Its a company that pretty much lives in the uncanny valley, that space between fake and real that can creep people out, but thats not usually what happens when people meet BabyX, said Soul Machines founder Mark Sagar.

Instead, he says, when the baby begins to whimper or cry, some respond in human ways, demonstratingwhat appears to be sympathy similar to the kind they maylavish on a human baby.

Ill probably get about 10 or 15 percent of people respond with thats creepy, and others it doesnt bother them at all. Ultimately its about creating an emotional connection and then people jump right into that, he said.

To see which of these two camps you fall into, watch the video below.

Sagar is an associate professor based at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Hes won an Academy Award for constructing lifelike animated faces for movies like King Kong and Spider-Man 2, work that began at Sagars Laboratory for Animate Technologies to create human movement designed not by actual human movement but byneural networks.There Sagar and staff combine fields like affective computing, bioengineering, theoretical neuroscience, and AI.

Soul Machines makes avatars ranging from a cartoon strawberry for a kids TV show to Nadia, an avatar voiced by actress Cate Blanchett that is able to serve Australian citizens looking for assistance from the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Other potential applications range from autonomous characters for VR, education, entertainment and gaming, and as a virtual assistants or customer service agents.

Within the coming year to 18 months, Soul Machines plans to open a platform for people to create their own avatars, like a more realistic Bitmoji.

Potential applications of itstech are numerous, but Soul Machines decided to create an AI baby because babies are natural learning machines and as a way to explore the field of social learning, because the companywants to train AI the same way humans raise children.

Its like really looking at the basics of how parents teach children, Sagar said. How does that interaction loop work? Because if we can create that with a computer, weve actually created a very natural way for people to teach computers.

It also helps lower performance expectations for the AI Sagar believes there wont be anything that approaches adult levels of cognition for a long time.

Avatars are made with biologically inspired cognitive models to give the most lifelike interaction as possible. Sagar isnt as concerned about entering uncanny valley as he is focused onavatars establishing a deep connection.

The brain reacts differently to something it perceives to be alive versus something which it perceives to be inanimate, he said. If you ever see a realistic eye looking at you, youre much more likely to respond than if you see a cartoon eye looking at you.

Responses to human emotion are also part of Soul Machines avatars, which can respond to human emotion it sees through cameras that track facial expression.

So should a Soul Machines avatar be in a store window or kiosk, it might look you in the eye. Look away and it could respond with body language meant to convey disappointment or sadness as a way to get your attention. A shop owner could also choose a more humorous or intellectual appeal, or portray a personality associated with their brand.

With biometrics, Soul Machines can remember faces and use AI to determine the best response based on previous interactions.

In time, affective computing couldbe used to create personality profiles that follow you around the world the waycookies follow you on the web across apps, games, virtual reality, and shop windows to develop an understanding of how to best serve your customer service needs (or manipulate you).

Affective computing is technology that can detecthuman emotion, and its being used to serve peopleads in supermarkets but also to improve sales or boardroom performance and, as Cogito does, help understand when veterans with PTSD need help.

In case you needed things to get even more futuristic or sci-fi, Sagar said in the future he may consider combining affective computing, avatars, and AI designed to mimic the tone, style, and word usage of people both alive and dead.

Its an idea that has been part of the popular imagination for some time but is now coming to life in a series of products and projects.

The New Dimensions in Testimony initiative from the University of Southern California interviews Holocaust survivors and makes a hologram of them. When combined with NLP, a person can ask the hologram virtually any question about their life experience; its like a memoir that can talk to you.

Using old chat conversation transcripts,the startup Luka created a neural network after the death of Roman Mazurenko, a close friend of CEO Eugenia Kuyda. A near-identical scenario played out on the TV show Black Mirror when a woman allowed a company to scrape her husbands old emails and put that avatar into a lifelike robot so she could be with him again.

Its a phenomena Sagar calls the creation of digital ghosts and a virtual spirit world.

Id be very interested in combining Luka-type technology with ours and just seeing the implications of that. I think its really a fascinating thing, he said. Once youve built an avatar, plus youve got the transcripts, you essentially created a digital ghost. Essentially were creating this kind of virtual spirit world.

Demos of BabyX 5.0 will begin in late 2017 or 2018, a company spokesperson said.

This post by Khari Johnson originally appeared on VentureBeat.

Tagged with: artificial intelligence

Original post:

Why Soul Machines Made an AI Baby - UploadVR

Is there a more ambivalent word in English than artificial?

Some artificial things are clearly beneficial, such as artificial organs, artificial insemination as a fertility treatment, and artificial sweeteners as an alternative to sugar for weight and diabetes control. But in other contexts, artificial can have a negative connotation. Artificial people. Artificial ingredients. Artificial turf on a baseball field.

Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, manages to straddle both sides of the fence. Its a term that evokes a range of feelings. AI, of course, is already all around us, whether its Apples Siri giving directions, Netflix suggesting movies you might like based on your choices of and reactions to previous films, or Tesla revolutionizing driving with predictive self-driving capabilities.

And AI is penetrating multiple industriesin myriad ways, such as taking some of the guesswork out of manufacturing design, preventing data breaches, smart ad targeting, analyzing structured and unstructured data for medical diagnoses, and sales forecasting.

But while AIs broad and positive impacts excite many people, some view AI as a job killer and a general existential threat to humanity.

Even one of the smartest people on the planet, Stephen Hawking, is ambiguous about the topic,warningthat AI is either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity.

As a sales and marketing executive, Ive been doing a lot of thinking about AI. And not to go all Pollyanna on you, but I believe that in my field, AI wont replace humans it actually will allow us to be more human. To understand why, start with the fact that the manner in which businesses engage with customers is one of the biggest competitive differentiators today. Customers interact with brands across multiple digital touch points from product research to the buying process to ongoing customer care and they expect an experience that feels personalized.

Thanks to the help of AI capabilities that can anticipate buyer behaviors, marketing technology can automate the entire process of reaching out to customers prescribing what type of content to send based on their previous behaviors and actions, as well as identifying the best time to send it.

So AI allows marketers to abandon linear, one-size-fits-all, persona-based customer engagement in favor of a more adaptive, individualized approach one that would be impossible or infeasible for humans to execute at scale.

Thats a big win forartificial intelligence. Another wininvolves sales and marketing reps themselves and the impact AI can have on how they look at and perform their jobs.

While the fear that AI will replace many jobs has some validity if Im a truck driver, for example, I probably have good reason to be wary of self-driving trucks sales and marketing is one of the industries discovering that AI frees employees from mundane tasks and enables them to be more productive and creative.

Even in sales and marketing, the fact remains that AI is a poor substitute for human interaction in certain situations. No matter how much of the buying process takes place in an automated fashion these days, a human-to-human component will still be essential at key junctures.

This means that even as machines take over more work and AI achieves increasingly human-like degrees of sophistication, human emotions such as empathy and creativity are more critical than ever.

And now individuals in sales and marketing get more time and energy to use them.

Despite how data obsessed sales and marketing have become and the growing reliance on AI in aspects of marketing execution, its still up to people to carry out the ultimate goal connecting the brand with other people.

This is why empathy the ability to understand and share the feelings of another is one of the top traits my company looks for in prospective employees.

Remember that sales and marketing have been and always will be exercises in human relations. Artificial intelligence may be playing an increasingly vital supporting role, but the profession remains all about building better, more meaningful person-to-person relationships.

David Satterwhite is the chief revenue officerat Act-On Software, a company that makes a software-as-a-service product for marketing automation.

Above: The Machine Intelligence Landscape This article is part of our Artificial Intelligence series. You can download a high-resolution version of the landscape featuring 288 companies by clicking the image.

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How human creativity plays a role in AI - VentureBeat

Mommas, dont let your babies grow up to be truck drivers. Or pretty much anything that a machine or a robot could do, if you want them to have a job. The list of those things will continue to get longer in some cases rapidly extending well beyond the assembly line on a factory floor.

The forecast is not all gloomy artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and automation are also expected to create jobs that will likely be much more interesting and creative than the repetitive tasks of the industrial age.

Indeed, it has been a growing component of cybersecurity technology, and therefore cybersecurity jobs, for several years. Former Symantec CTO Amit Mital (now manager at KRNL Labs), at a panel discussion sponsored by Fortune magazine in 2015, called AI one of the few beacons of hope in this mess the mess being cybersecurity, which he contended is basically broken.

[Related: -->Machine learning: Cybersecurity dream-come-true or pipe dream?]

That, according to a number of experts on panel discussions of AI at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium on Wednesday, illustrates both the peril and the promise of the technology.The enormous challenge, they said, will be to minimize the peril while maximizing the benefits.

According to Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at MIT and co-director of the universitys Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE), AI amounts to, the largest disruption in labor and the way we work, in generations. He called it the, second phase of the second machine age, and noted that while he and his co-panelist, Erik Brynjolfsson, have written two books on the topic, we dont know whats coming at us.The panel title was that of their forthcoming book: Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future.

McAfee cited an example of the increasing power of AI from this week, when a computer program, Googles AlphaGo, defeated Ke Jie, Chinas top player of the ancient strategy game Go, after which Ke said this was no fluke that the programs understanding of Go and the judgment of the game is beyond our ability.

Brynjolfsson, MIT professor and director of the IDE, agreed. He said the second wave, is machines moving beyond what they are taught by humans to learning on their own.It is the most important thing affecting the economy and society, he said.

Those warnings were somewhat offset by assurances that while AI is already better than humans at jobs that involve patterns, and will be getting much better, it is not even close to matching humans in areas like creativity, collaboration and even conversations smart machines are still dependent on the datasets used to train them.

[Related: -->AI isn't just for the good guys anymore]

That capacity to absorb and analyze massive datasets is one of the things that makes AI effective in cybersecurity, It can spot anomalies much more quickly than humans.

But as Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab and moderator of a panel titled, Putting AI to Work, put it, the fear that machines will become smarter than humans and take over the world is tempered by the reality that theyre stupid and theyve already taken over the world.

There was general agreement that AI is now generating and will continue to generate massive disruption. It will require massive adaptation if AI is to benefit society at large, and not just a few big winners.Some panelists were optimistic that, as has been the case with other technological revolutions, there will be new jobs created that cant even be imagined now.

However,Ryan Gariepy, cofounder and CTO of Clearpath and OTTO Motors, was dubious that the same will happen with the revolution now under way.My opinion is that we will not see net new job creation, he said. If I and other people do our jobs, you wont need as many people to keep the world moving. There needs to be some social consideration of that.

He said he expects millions of jobs to become obsolete, and for that trend to accelerate, adding that retraining is not always a practical option.Truck drivers cant go back to school, he said, and 90 percent of those jobs will disappear in a generation, when autonomous vehicles become standard.

Brynjolfsson warned that it wont just be low- to medium-skilled jobs affected. There is the potential for it to take over many other jobs, he said. Machines can read MRIs and other medical images. People with 20 years training may find their skills are irrelevant.

Ali Azarbayejani, CTO of Cognito Corporation, noted that while the current technology revolution will likely create many new jobs, they will be different jobs that require different skills.

Some of those jobs are already apparent in cybersecurity. As has been well documented, robots and machines can be hacked. There have been high-profile demonstrations of hacks of self-driving vehicles.So those machines, devices and vehicles, and the individual users and companies that depend on them, will require an expanding security workforce for protection.

Seth Earley, CEO of Earley Information Science, while agreeing there will be, an enormous amount of disruption," from AI, was more optimistic about retraining for the jobs of the future.The thing that is causing the problem is part of the solution, because of improvements in training with robot simulation, he said. Imagine the best teacher you ever had. Imagine that being developed into a program.

The least disruptive scenario, Ito said, would be for AI to augment rather than automate the workplace. Augmentation doesnt mean youve given up your agency, he said. I dont think letting the machine decide is optimal.

[Related: -->AI will transform information security, but it wont happen overnight]

Azarbayejani said augmentation is one of the services his firm provides listening to workers in large call centers, not only for measuring (customer service) but how to improve in real time. Its very much augmenting it doesnt replace humans, but helps them do their jobs better, he said.

For those left unemployed, there was some discussion of the societal implications of providing a UBI (universal basic income) to all people whether they are working or not. But McAfee contended, we are nowhere near peak labor, and Brynjolfsson said most people want to work and be engaged in their community.Were not in a world where were short of work that humans can do, he said. Thats decades out.

If there is a way to prepare for what is already under way, several panelists said it will have to involve re-thinking education.Kids should talk to each other and play with one another, Brynjolfsson said. Right now they are well trained for the first machine age, but not for collaboration and creativity.

McAfee agreed. An amazing number of entrepreneurs were dropouts, he observed.

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AI: The promise and the peril - CSO Online

Smartphones changed a lot, but now Artificial Intelligence is taking care of business

Since we live in the age of technology, it seems like every other day there is a new gadget or system that is changing how we live our lives. And while it may be some time before we drive hovercrafts and have robotic maids (like Rosie from The Jetsons), Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a huge player in technological innovation right now.

On a smaller scale, there are smart apps that allow you to turn off lights in your home or start your car. On a larger and more popular level, are those AI systems that have become mainstream, like Apples Siri or Amazons Alexa. These products are changing how people interact with technology, and in the entrepreneurial sphere, how people work and conduct business each day. Here are a few ways that these AIs are affecting, and often improving, the day to day lives of entrepreneurs.

Organization

If you went back just two decades, it would seem impossible that people would no longer need weekly planners and rolodexes. Keeping track of your schedule, planned events, and friends phone numbers was a pen and paper ordeal. Once smartphones came into the picture, it seemed natural to oust the old methodsthere was a calendar and address book, even a wallet, right in your phone.

Then came helpers like Siri. Without lifting a finger, you can ask the sassy assistant to not only jot down appointments, but to rearrange them and make note of future events; she even gives you directions to locations. Americans are known for their workaholic tendencies, but now more than ever, multi-tasking is the method of operation. Busy entrepreneurs can use platforms like Siri as date books and secretaries. Everything is in one place, managed by a smart computer.

Communication

Its easy to shrug off the notion that people dont talk as much due to the evolution of technology, but with AI, it is clear that the way we talk to one another is quickly changing. While at one point, a businessperson would have to set aside time to sit down to make a call or send an email, it can now be done anytime, anywhere.

Similar to the perks of streamlined organization, Artificial Intelligence allows entrepreneurs to text or email on the go. You just say the word, Google, send an email to Bob, and the AI will allow you to vocalize what you want to say. AI is even learning how to communicate with humans, and how to interact with them on a deeper level. This may seem trivial, but this technology is huge. It wasnt that long ago that the internet seemed like the most complex discovery, but now AI can connect entrepreneurs and other businesspeople not only to the web, but to each other.

Health

You trust your doctor with your life, right? Now imagine your doctor was a robot. Would that change how you got regular check-ups or diagnoses? Well, AI is now becoming ever more popular in healthcare and wellness. For entrepreneurs, healthcare related AI not only provides a spectacular platform for new innovations, but also be more aware of how their busy lives affect their health.

Not only are AI machines replacing doctors in tradition positions, but more people use technology to monitor and adjust their health trends than ever before. There are AI trainers and apps that allow people to keep in shape. AI can even improve diagnostic accuracy and patient care, replacing harmful or inaccurate procedures. These innovations can allow people to be healthier, heal faster, and improve the future of medical technologies.

Sales and Marketing

The most important way AI is a game-changer for entrepreneurs and businesses? The powerful impact it has on sales and marketing. Often, people are unaware of how integrated AI is in their business operations, but the affect AI technology has is impressive.

Besides assisting with menial, daily tasks, AI can also take on data analysis and improvement. Artificial Intelligence can track minute changes and patterns in the ways people buy and sell. It can also write headlines geared toward marketing to humans, recommend products, and customize the experience a consumer has. For entrepreneurs, introducing AI into their sales and marketing processes can boost their reach and impact in a way traditional methods cannot.

As for the ways entrepreneurs can use AI, it is endless. The technology is ever changing, but it is all about knowing that innovation is an asset. Finding ways to innovate helps entrepreneurs reach new clients and stay up to date. Were always trying to use new systems to make the most of the available technologies, notes Randall B. Isenberg, attorney and founder at the Law Offices of Randall B. Isenberg. Innovation is the key to being a successful entrepreneur, and artificial intelligence products are now undeniably an important aspect of innovative technology.

There are so many ways AI is changing the world and the way we live, but entrepreneurs especially have so much to gain from its advantages. Its just a matter of finding the right kind of AI and keeping up with the ever-changing innovations!

Read next: Android co-creator's new 'Essential' smartphone will probably be revealed next week

Excerpt from:

How AI is changing the way entrepreneurs do business - TNW

Mommas, dont let your babies grow up to be truck drivers. Or pretty much anything that a machine or a robot could do, if you want them to have a job. The list of those things will continue to get longer in some cases rapidly extending well beyond the assembly line on a factory floor.

The forecast is not all gloomy artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and automation are also expected to create jobs that will likely be much more interesting and creative than the repetitive tasks of the industrial age.

Indeed, it has been a growing component of cybersecurity technology, and therefore cybersecurity jobs, for several years. Former Symantec CTO Amit Mital (now manager at KRNL Labs), at a panel discussion sponsored by Fortune magazine in 2015, called AI one of the few beacons of hope in this mess the mess being cybersecurity, which he contended is basically broken.

[Related: -->Machine learning: Cybersecurity dream-come-true or pipe dream?]

That, according to a number of experts on panel discussions of AI at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium on Wednesday, illustrates both the peril and the promise of the technology.The enormous challenge, they said, will be to minimize the peril while maximizing the benefits.

According to Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at MIT and co-director of the universitys Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE), AI amounts to, the largest disruption in labor and the way we work, in generations. He called it the, second phase of the second machine age, and noted that while he and his co-panelist, Erik Brynjolfsson, have written two books on the topic, we dont know whats coming at us.The panel title was that of their forthcoming book: Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future.

McAfee cited an example of the increasing power of AI from this week, when a computer program, Googles AlphaGo, defeated Ke Jie, Chinas top player of the ancient strategy game Go, after which Ke said this was no fluke that the programs understanding of Go and the judgment of the game is beyond our ability.

Brynjolfsson, MIT professor and director of the IDE, agreed. He said the second wave, is machines moving beyond what they are taught by humans to learning on their own.It is the most important thing affecting the economy and society, he said.

Those warnings were somewhat offset by assurances that while AI is already better than humans at jobs that involve patterns, and will be getting much better, it is not even close to matching humans in areas like creativity, collaboration and even conversations smart machines are still dependent on the datasets used to train them.

[Related: -->AI isn't just for the good guys anymore]

That capacity to absorb and analyze massive datasets is one of the things that makes AI effective in cybersecurity, It can spot anomalies much more quickly than humans.

But as Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab and moderator of a panel titled, Putting AI to Work, put it, the fear that machines will become smarter than humans and take over the world is tempered by the reality that theyre stupid and theyve already taken over the world.

There was general agreement that AI is now generating and will continue to generate massive disruption. It will require massive adaptation if AI is to benefit society at large, and not just a few big winners.Some panelists were optimistic that, as has been the case with other technological revolutions, there will be new jobs created that cant even be imagined now.

However,Ryan Gariepy, cofounder and CTO of Clearpath and OTTO Motors, was dubious that the same will happen with the revolution now under way.My opinion is that we will not see net new job creation, he said. If I and other people do our jobs, you wont need as many people to keep the world moving. There needs to be some social consideration of that.

He said he expects millions of jobs to become obsolete, and for that trend to accelerate, adding that retraining is not always a practical option.Truck drivers cant go back to school, he said, and 90 percent of those jobs will disappear in a generation, when autonomous vehicles become standard.

Brynjolfsson warned that it wont just be low- to medium-skilled jobs affected. There is the potential for it to take over many other jobs, he said. Machines can read MRIs and other medical images. People with 20 years training may find their skills are irrelevant.

Ali Azarbayejani, CTO of Cognito Corporation, noted that while the current technology revolution will likely create many new jobs, they will be different jobs that require different skills.

Some of those jobs are already apparent in cybersecurity. As has been well documented, robots and machines can be hacked. There have been high-profile demonstrations of hacks of self-driving vehicles.So those machines, devices and vehicles, and the individual users and companies that depend on them, will require an expanding security workforce for protection.

Seth Earley, CEO of Earley Information Science, while agreeing there will be, an enormous amount of disruption," from AI, was more optimistic about retraining for the jobs of the future.The thing that is causing the problem is part of the solution, because of improvements in training with robot simulation, he said. Imagine the best teacher you ever had. Imagine that being developed into a program.

The least disruptive scenario, Ito said, would be for AI to augment rather than automate the workplace. Augmentation doesnt mean youve given up your agency, he said. I dont think letting the machine decide is optimal.

[Related: -->AI will transform information security, but it wont happen overnight]

Azarbayejani said augmentation is one of the services his firm provides listening to workers in large call centers, not only for measuring (customer service) but how to improve in real time. Its very much augmenting it doesnt replace humans, but helps them do their jobs better, he said.

For those left unemployed, there was some discussion of the societal implications of providing a UBI (universal basic income) to all people whether they are working or not. But McAfee contended, we are nowhere near peak labor, and Brynjolfsson said most people want to work and be engaged in their community.Were not in a world where were short of work that humans can do, he said. Thats decades out.

If there is a way to prepare for what is already under way, several panelists said it will have to involve re-thinking education.Kids should talk to each other and play with one another, Brynjolfsson said. Right now they are well trained for the first machine age, but not for collaboration and creativity.

McAfee agreed. An amazing number of entrepreneurs were dropouts, he observed.

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AI: The promise and the peril | CSO Online - CSO Online

Opportunity in Automation

Automation will force most people out of a job and society will eventually be forced to adopt some form of universal basic income. What then? What are people going to do whenthey no longer have to work?Click to View Full Infographic

Initially, it seems like a nice problem to have as it will free people to do what they really want to do with their lives. But we define ourselves by how we contribute to society, for most people their career is the answer to who they are and what they do.

Some will spend all that extra time doing more of the things they already do with their free time: surfing the internet, watching movies and TV shows, and playing video games.

But there is an opportunity this future we are quickly hurtling towards will also create. Rather than just being passive consumers of content, people will all be able to become active participants in content creation.

YouTube is the worldsthird most visited site after Google(which also owns YouTube) and Facebook.300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and3.25 billion hours of video are watched each month.Gone are the days when we rely solely on giant studios and networks for our entertainment as increasingly people are turning to other people for content.

Online content creation has become an industry unto itself as the number of YouTube channels earning six figures has increased by 50% year on year. Digital marketplaces for a wide variety of content creators are coming online allowing anyone who wants to become a digital entrepreneur.

This will impact how individual value is measured. Your worth will no longer come from the company you work for or the degree you have but by the popularity of your creations. A history of producing things people want will be all that has value.

Passive consumption will also continue to grow and will become even more appealing and addictive than it is today.

98 million people now have Netflix accounts and that number is growing rapidly. The company got here by understanding the importance of creating easy and addictive user experiences. They started in 1997 selling home deliver DVDs and in 2007 switched to become the go-to live streaming on-demand platform that has made them the largest internet television network in America.

However their plan is to become the biggest entertainment network on earth and to get there Netflix is now harnessing artificial intelligence to customize their user interface to fit each persons unique tastes. Here is CEO of Netflix Reed Hastings in a talk titled leveraging AI to make user experience & entertainment addictive.

Facebook just launched what they are calling Act 2,which is going to take the social media giant away from its core product, social media, and refocus its efforts on augmented reality and artificial intelligence.

In a talk on April 18th Mark Zuckerberg outlined his vision for the future of Facebook. He simultaneously launched the beta version of Facebooks new augmented reality tool that will leverage their social media platforms; Facebook, Whatsapp, Snapchat and Instagram, to createthe communities he has been talking about a lot lately.

Underlying all of the augmented reality applications, as well as the new messaging service and the new VR social media platform that they are also rolling out is machine learning algorithms (AI). Zuckerberg stated in his address that the application of AI to all that Facebook is doingwill eventually allow the platform to replace all of the hardware in the real world with digital versions of them that look and feel just as real.

Another critical part of this plan is to make these platforms open and allow for anyone who wants to contribute to the creation of all the content that will go into them.

Already having surpassed the film and music industries combined, video games are poised to grow even faster in the decade to come with the rise of virtual and augmented reality.The continued rise of E-gaming and live stream gaming platforms like Twitch will further this trend, already last year more people watched the league of legends finals than the NBA finals.

The biggest game changer will eventually come from immersive artificially intelligent entertainment. Once AI becomes good at writing novel code it will be able to create virtual experiences that can be crafted to each user, writing movies for you as you watch them and writing games for you as you play them, making it possible that no two people will ever play the same game or watch the same movie.

For those that recognize and take advantage of all these changes it means a shift away from passive consumption to active selection of entertainment and the ability to participate in the creation of content.

For those that dont adjust and get stuck in the passive consumption model of the past the future will probably look something like this.

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AI and Robots Will Change the Way We Create and Consume Content - Futurism