Artificial Intelligence and its cohorts machine learning and cognitive computing (A.I., for simplicity) are going to make the digital disruption of the last 15 years look like child’s play.

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SHORT SUMMARY

Artificial Intelligence and its cohorts machine learning and cognitive computing (A.I., for simplicity) are going to make the digital disruption of the last 15 years look like child’s play. A.I. will be the operating system for our brave new world. Its enablers will be processing power, mobile computing, billions of sensors, the cloud, data and analytics. And a host of other new technologies.

If you’re a business leader, owner or Director you have an urgent obligation to work out what this means for your business, for your customers, your employees, your suppliers and your shareholders. A.I. will sneak up on you much faster than you can imagine.

Ubiquitous software algorithms are already having an enormous impact on our lives. While most algorithms aren’t yet true A.I., software can already write code to improve itself. When machines start to practice recursive self-improvement, they will out-think humans.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that within 30 years “The Singularity” (2) will occur, fusing together both technology and humanity. The optimists believe in a limitless future where disease is cured, prosperity abounds, the environment is restored, and the quality of life is high.

The pessimists believe that A.I. will take over the world by itself or fall into the wrong hands. In this construct, the pop culture imagery of movies becomes reality, with devastating consequences to humanity. Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Steven Hawking believe that A.I. may represent an existential threat. However, no one really knows what will happen.​

A.I. will play a meaningful role in the predicted demise of 80% of the world’s top 100 companies over the next 30 years. Certain industries are already being affected by algorithms, and will be profoundly affected as true A.I. develops.

There are no rules governing the development and propagation of A.I., and there are unlikely to be any time soon. By the time Governments realise they need to legislate, it will already be too late.

Record levels of capital and research are now being devoted to A.I. An inflection point is getting closer all the time. Whether you believe in the optimistic or the pessimistic scenario, there’s no doubt that A.I. is coming, and its coming fast. Is your business even vaguely prepared?

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SOME BASICS

Let’s start with some basic definitions. In a voice search I asked Google, “what is artificial intelligence?” The answer, spoken back to me, was something like this:

“the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages”.​

I did the same for machine learning and Google provided the following response:

“Cognitive computing is the simulation of human thought processes in a computerized model. Cognitive computing involves self-learning systems that use data mining, pattern recognition and natural language processing to mimic the way the human brain works.”

Tim Urban in his “Wait but Why” column has written a piece worth reading on A.I.: “The A.I. Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence.”(2) Urban tells us that there are three phases of machine intelligence: (1) Artificial Narrow Intelligence (narrow tasks currently being performed by assistants such as Siri and Alexa); (2) Artificial General Intelligence (when the machine becomes as smart as humans) and (3) Artificial Super Intelligence (when the machines work together and become significantly smarter than humans).

The more that we humans allocate resources to artificial intelligence, the sooner we will create a state of recursive self-improvement. Already, instead of humans writing code, some software can write its own code in repeated cycles of improvement. Many futurists believe that we will reach Artificial Super Intelligence within 30 years, and when that happens either (a) man’s era of dominance will be over, or (b) man and technology will fuse, to create a new paradigm.

Let’s examine the environmental factors and the hype to try to work out what comes next. I’ll start by revisiting my Digital Tsunami blog and keynote series on digital disruption (4):