Recently, in the technology and marketing communities, we have started to have a robust discussion about the future impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the world’s workforce. Companies and countries are starting to map out some of the potential ways this could play out.
Let’s take a quick step back. Let’s define Artificial Intelligence. As usual, Wikipedia has a pretty good definition.
Artificial intelligence (AI), sometimes called machine intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans and other animals…. Colloquially, the term “artificial intelligence” is applied when a machine mimics “cognitive” functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as “learning” and “problem solving”
AI refers to the ability of computers and machines to learn and perform tasks that traditionally only humans could do.
AI is being used already
There are radical developments in AI happening in the following fields:
Healthcare
Artificial intelligence is breaking into the healthcare industry by assisting doctors. According to Bloomberg Technology, Microsoft has developed AI to help doctors find the right treatments for cancer. There is a great amount of research and drugs developed relating to cancer. In detail, there are more than 800 medicines and vaccines to treat cancer. This negatively affects the doctors, because there are too many options to choose from, making it more difficult to choose the right drugs for the patients. AI helps with those problems.
According to CNN, a recent study by surgeons at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington successfully demonstrated surgery with an autonomous robot. The team supervised the robot while it performed soft-tissue surgery, stitching together a pig’s bowel during open surgery, and doing so better than a human surgeon, the team claimed.
Driverless cars
Advancements in AI have contributed to the growth of the automotive industry through the creation and evolution of self-driving vehicles. As of 2016, there were over 30 companies utilizing AI into the creation of driverless cars. A few companies involved with AI include Tesla, Google, and Apple.
Finance and economics
Financial institutions have long used artificial neural network systems to detect charges or claims outside of the norm, flagging these for human investigation. Financial Institutions also routinely use AI and Machine Learning to determine credit worthiness.
Video games
In video games, artificial intelligence is routinely used to generate dynamic purposeful behavior in non-player characters (NPCs). In addition, well-understood AI techniques are routinely used for pathfinding. Some researchers consider NPC AI in games to be a “solved problem” for most production tasks.
Military
Worldwide annual military spending on robotics rose from 5.1 billion USD in 2010 to 7.5 billion USD in 2015. Military drones capable of autonomous action are widely considered a useful asset. In 2017, Vladimir Putin stated that “Whoever becomes the leader in (artificial intelligence) will become the ruler of the world”.
Advertising
A report by the Guardian newspaper in the UK in 2018 found that online gambling companies were using AI to predict the behavior of customers in order to target them with personalized promotions.
Developers of commercial AI platforms are also beginning to appeal more directly to casino operators, offering a range of existing and potential services to help them boost their profits and expand their customer base.
and more…
My concern though is a little less altruistic and more personal.
What is the future of content creation when a machine can write better than I can?
So many questions.
What is the future of blogs, blogging, content and landing pages when I can come up with a title and feed it to a program to auto-generate the content? Today we have plugins for WordPress that auto “spin” content and come up with pretty tacky “articles” but that technology is crap today.
What happens when those types of apps are perfected?
Here’s the challenge – on one hand I can make the case that if a machine can predict my credit worthiness with greater certainty than a banker, it should be able to create more engaging content than any blogger can.
Let’s go a little deeper.
If it can create more engaging content, it should be able to create more organic keywords and more effective calls to action than any human writer could.
Theoretically this would mean MUCH more profitable articles and landing pages i.e. more $$$ for the advertisers.
On the other hand, this means, a LOT of digital marketing bloggers, writers and copywriters would be out of jobs. That’s not even considering the newspaper business which could theoretically all be run by machines in real time putting EVERY reporter out of business… but I digress.
AI is an asymmetrical weapon, both in business and warfare. The first businesses to deploy this technology will win and grow exponential marketshare compared to companies that depend on real human beings.
The creepy part is, when AI is deployed, you as a consumer will never know. I mean think about it, you assume I am a human being writing this article right? You have no idea.
These are some of the conundrums I think we will face very soon with the rollout and deployment of AI. What do you all think?
Let me know in the comments below…