Big Companies Are Betting Largely On Artificial Inte Lligence. Here Is A Brief Account.
By Sheahan Nasir Bhuiyan
The concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for years now. Back in the 90s, the Terminator franchise portrayed a possible future dominated by AI. A similar storyline was used in the Matrix trilogy. We haven’t quite reached that level as of yet, but astounding progress has been made in the field in recent years. In 2014, a computer program called Eugene Goostman, which simulates a 13 year old Ukrainian boy, became the first computer to have passed the Turing Test. The Turing Test was developed by Alan Turing in 1950 to test the ability of a machine to exhibit intelligent behavior similar to, or indistinguishable from that of a human being. Although the results were disputed by some, it is nonetheless an amazing feat. We will further look at a few more innovations which can drastically alter everything we do in the very near future:
Nadine
Meet Nadine, who works as a receptionist at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU). She is just like every other receptionist, very friendly and outgoing, and even remembers you from previous visits. The big difference is that Nadine is a robot. Named after NTU professor Nadia Magnenat Thalmann, Nadine is a lifelike humanoid who can shake hands, and exhibits her own personality and emotional range. Professor Thalmann, the director of NTU’s Institute for Media Innovation, led Nadine’s development and claimed that robots like her (it?) will be ready to be deployed into real life scenarios very soon. Nadine is powered by a software similar to that of Apple’s Siri and she has the capability to act as a personal assistant or a companion. Her applications can range from receptionist to companionship for the elderly and the young. Thalmann claims that such innovations could provide part of a solution in developed countries where the ageing population will reduce the size of the workforce in the near future. This leads Star Wars fans to look forward to the prospects of having their very own C3PO or R2D2 droids!
AlphaGo
Back in 1997, headlines were created when IBM’s Deep Blue defeated chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov to become the first artificially intelligent machine to beat a reigning world champion under regular time controls. IBM achieved this feat by calculating all possible end games and then choosing the best move. In March 2016, Google’s AlphaGo defeated world champion Lee Sedol 4-1 in the ancient Chinese game of Go, a feat far more impressive than Deep Blue’s achievement. While it is possible for a computer to calculate all the end games in a chess game, it is impossible in the game of Go. The possible outcomes in a standard 19-by-19 grid is 10,761, which is more than the number of atoms in the observable universe. Thus to defeat the world champion, AlphaGo needed to exhibit human-like intuitive behavior which it skillyfully mastered. There were instances when AlphaGo made unpredicted moves and completely stumped Lee.
AlphaGo is an algorithm developed by Google which is capable of self-learning and tackling different problems. Prior to playing Go, AlphaGo was used to play other video games such as Space Invaders, Breakout, Pong and others. No specific programming was required and AlphaGo mastered each game by a process of trial and error to showcase its abilities to learn from previous experiences. This was done by creating a network of hardware and software much like the web of neurons in our brain. Just as we seek rewards, the algorithm can be programmed to seek rewards in the form of better scores in games. Such an ability, to analyze millions of gigabytes of data and then making high-reward choices all in a short time span can lead to thousands of applications in the future, way beyond gaming.
IBM Watson
IBM’s Watson may be the most exciting artificial intelligent being out there, or at least the one with the most promising real life application to date. Initially created to appear on the TV show Jeopardy, Watson is a question and answer machine which is capable of understanding natural language alongside machine learning to provide answers from a huge swathe of unstructured data stored in its system. Similarly to AlphaGo, it started out playing games but since then has progressed to more useful applications, especially in the health sector. Watson has three critical components which make it what it is: 1. the ability to understand natural language, 2. having access to an enormous corpus of data and information, and 3. the machine learning aspect. Machine learning is described as the ability of the machine to improve the accuracy of its answers by being told what is right and wrong over time. Watson remembers the answers and over time improves its abilities to answer patient questions. Watson has access to millions of pages of medical journals and patient data and is able to provide recommendations to physicians. A doctor needs to describe the symptoms to an iPad app in regular spoken English for the app to give a recommendation. A key human attribute is our ability to recognize patterns. Till now, this ability has given us an edge over machines. Often a doctor is able to provide a diagnosis just by hearing your symptoms. Watson has nullified that advantage and for as little cost as an Ipad app!
All three innovations are extremely exciting and can lead to massive advancements across many sectors. However, several prominent tech gurus have warned against the uncontrolled advancement of AI. Elon Musk compared AI to be potentially more dangerous than nuclear weapons while Steve Wozniak has said, “Will we be the gods? Will we be the family pets? Or will we be ants that get stepped on?” in response to AI. Quite some dark thoughts, but AI will create job losses once advanced enough. Much like how automation decimated blue collar workers, programs like AlphaGo and Watson will threaten white collar jobs. But the loss of one type of job will lead to other new jobs. Just like we went from being weavers and spinners to aircraft engineers, we can go from being white collar workers to who knows what in the future.
