Couple of interesting articles caught my attention this week related to the field of AI.
Bill Gates’ dose of motivation to the graduates of 2017 on what’s on the horizon for Technology and how it could impact our lives. He picks 3 areas, where Technology could make an immense impact to human lives in the coming days.
AI, Energy and Biosciences.
If you think about it, these three are at the crux of basic needs for future human survival – access to affordable and cleaner sources of Energy, especially when our needs are growing exponentially with the rise in consumption from the developing countries. No one can ask them not to consume more, which is equivalent to saying ‘don’t aspire to grow‘.
The second area is around BioSciences, which in turn helps us find cure to some of the deadliest diseases that have haunted human existence across the world and in turn help us lead a healthier life.
The third and most interesting area is the advancements in the area of Artificial Intelligence.
Growth in AI need not mean a direct threat to Human Intelligence, as it is widely perceived and reported today, especially in the scenario where thousands of jobs are getting displaced to Automation.
More and more, the opportunities of AI would be to augment human capability and to improve productivity and efficiency at scale we have not seen before.
As much as we keep talking about it, we have become a silent consumer of the AI based services in our daily life for quite some time now. Google Assistant, Translate, most of the Social Media platforms and the emerging field of Conversational Anything with Chatbots are all leading this AI revolution.
The second one, not surprisingly, is the focus around AI at Google I/O 2017. No wonder, all the major tech players are so bullish on their AI agenda.
Here is an interesting piece of statistics on the Race for AI domination among the big players,
You will find more statistics at Statista
Bottomline, as I strongly believe, the Future is not about losing jobs to Machines and AI, it is as much about the exciting opportunities ahead to leverage Technology to solve some of the complex problems facing the coming generation.
What is getting redefined is a new baseline for future skills. As machines become more intelligent, our abilities and skills need to scale up the knowledge chain.
As Gates says,
It doesn’t mean you ignore the serious problems we face. It just means you believe they can be solved, and you’re moved to act on that belief.
It sure is exciting times ahead. Strap on!
