Gary Morgenthaler’s article about the future of artificial intelligence, or AI, mentions numerous interesting ways in which society may use AI in everyday life in the near future. Morgenthaler mentioned new innovations ranging from Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs) to language recognition programs from companies such as Nuance or Vlingo. These new applications for AI will be incredibly user-friendly, allowing a person to use a VPA to schedule a meeting with clients, ask questions to receive a definitive answer (as opposed to hundreds of links based on keywords), and to even have a reliable voice recognition system that bases its knowledge on millions of words and various pronunciations. While the new and improved technologies are impressive, there is a more interesting aspect to the author’s view of the future. The future of AI, which is but one subset of Information Technology, now relies on other aspects of IT, such as cloud computing, in order to improve its efficiency and boost its computing power. These previously separated sectors of IT are now coming together for the improvement of technology as a whole. For example, language recognition companies such as Vlingo and Nuance use data from multiple sources through cloud computing so that they “can capture the tens of thousands of words in the whole English language with near 100 percent accuracy” (Morgenthaler). Since these various aspects of Information Technology have come together, the proficiency of these technological advancements has skyrocketed, increasing exponentially.
Artificial intelligence, based on the suggestions in this article, will be virtually everywhere in our lives in the near future. There are numerous benefits to these improvements in technology. For example, AI programs that can easily answer questions online will soon render Google’s search engine obsolete and will allow people to access the information they need more quickly than ever before. Also, computers will be able to accurately translate data into other languages, help organize a person’s day by making appointments and reservations, and increase efficiency in a person’s work day by using voice recognition technology to make calls and send emails (Morgenthaler). Other firms are also using AI on a company-wide level to increase reliability in their services. Karma Snack, for instance, uses an AI robot named Carmen to gather more market research data for its pay-per-click management company than ever before. The AI program even changes a client’s website based on consumer preferences. Karma Snack’s brand director Adelard Gasana states that AI has greatly improved the company’s productivity levels and economic efficiency, since ‘"With this new technology, we are able to manage massive corporate websites of Fortune 100 companies with only minimal staff requirements on their end"’ (“Artificial Intelligence”). As a result, AI has many benefits as it becomes smarter, faster, and more adaptable to new situations, like a human.
However, Morgenthaler’s article does not fully address the potential drawbacks that such a reliance on AI may have for people in the future. The author humorously describes the potential negative consequences of such reliance on technology as a “dystopian future akin to SkyNet in Terminator 3” (Morgenthaler). There is more to consider here than simply an apocalyptic view of men versus machines. I think that while AI is able to improve human life to a certain extent by increasing efficiency and making life easier and faster on a day to day basis, there are certain risks in trusting technology to organize and run our lives for us. Furthermore, it seems that there may be something inherently inhuman in overdependence on technology. The more we intertwine our lives with AI, the more we depend on a machine than on the human ingenuity that created it in the first place. As a result, it appears that as these new innovations make our lives easier, we must make sure to not lose our independence as a consequence of relying on technology.
Sources:
"Artificial Intelligence + Pay Per Click Management = Small Business Win." PRWeb. 01 Nov. 2010. Web. 02 Nov. 2010.
Morgenthaler, Gary. "AI's Time Has Arrived." BusinessWeek. 21 Sept. 2010. Web. 01 Nov. 2010.
And here is a video of Vlingo’s voice recognition technology and its impressive accuracy as a result of the Artificial Intelligence that it utilizes:
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