{"id":1901,"date":"2019-08-22T04:01:14","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T04:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kusuaks7\/?p=1506"},"modified":"2024-04-26T09:19:28","modified_gmt":"2024-04-26T09:19:28","slug":"ais-true-colors-arent-as-scary-as-we-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/ai-ml\/ais-true-colors-arent-as-scary-as-we-think\/","title":{"rendered":"AI’s true colors aren’t as scary as we think"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u201cIt\u2019s a trap,\u201d Admiral Ackbar famously said in\u00a0Return of the Jedi<\/em>, when he realized that the rebel fleet that was supposed to be launching a\u00a0surprise attack on the new Death Star had gone\u00a0straight into the path of the Imperial forces.\u00a0Exactly the same can be said of the way many\u00a0businesses and media outlets have recently\u00a0portrayed artificial intelligence (AI).\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCompanies have been providing nonstop\u00a0reminders that robots are taking over an\u00a0increasing number of jobs, leading us to ever\u00a0larger-scale unemployment. The recent opening\u00a0of Amazon Go has taken this issue to new\u00a0heights. Through Amazon Go, customers can just\u00a0pick up the items they want to buy and walk out,\u00a0and a receipt pops up on their phone. In a stroke,\u00a0cashiers are no longer required.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRecent studies on AI-led unemployment\u00a0make depressing reading. A key report points\u00a0out that some 47% of US jobs will be automated\u00a0in the near future. Another study suggests that\u00a045% of the daily tasks currently done by humans\u00a0could be automated if current trends continue.\u00a0In our recent book,\u00a0Understanding How the Future\u00a0Unfolds: Using Drive to Harness the Power of Today\u2019s\u00a0Megatrends<\/em><\/a>, we mentioned the case of a chief\u00a0financial officer at an investment bank. He was\u00a0given the task of reducing the size of his staff by\u00a080%, as off-the-shelf digital technologies could\u00a0be doing the jobs occupied by humans. From this\u00a0vantage point, it seems that, in the near future,\u00a0human beings will become the horses of the past.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\nThe bad news does not seem to stop here\u00a0though: it isn\u2019t just the job markets that are\u00a0under threat; to some, it seems that mankind\u00a0itself is besieged by intelligent machines. Elon\u00a0Musk called the prospect of AI \u201cour greatest\u00a0existential threat\u201d, and Bill Gates echoes this\u00a0sentiment. The late Professor Stephen Hawking,\u00a0meanwhile, said that creating AI is the biggest\u00a0event in human history \u2013 and also the last.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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AI\u2019s true colours<\/h3><\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWe don\u2019t presume to be qualified to dismiss the\u00a0opinions of these great thinkers. But what we\u00a0can do is highlight the reality of AI right now.\u00a0Despite the doomsday views, the reality is that\u00a0the current capability of AI is actually so limited\u00a0that the threat of a machine-dominated world\u00a0remains a concept that belongs to a galaxy far,\u00a0far away.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDespite the endless media coverage on how clever computers are, it is important\u00a0to understand that there isn\u2019t really that\u00a0much intelligence in AI. Intelligence refers to one\u2019s capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, planning, creativity and problem-solving. Yet, at the moment, machines can do very few of these things. Intelligence implies the ability to think. But AI does not think.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe true ability of AI lies in the way that it processes a huge amount of data sources and then, based on this, makes the right guesses\u00a0in terms of decision output. Over time, the\u00a0more the machines perform the same task, the more they can adjust their information processing and, consequently, the better they become at guessing. This is pretty much how machines \u2018learn\u2019.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOne may argue that machines these days can read text, see images and hear natural speech with unprecedented levels of accuracy. For instance, at our AI solutions company Nexus Frontier Tech, our intelligent scanner can already achieve 99% accuracy in reading texts, whether they are typed or handwritten, and whether they are presented in digital or physical form. This makes machines look very capable and smart. Yet, under the hood, the mechanism is not very different from how our brain works (hence the fact that AI development right now is mostly based on artificial neural networks).\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOur brains work like this: we draw various data inputs from multiple sources and then consider whether or not this received information is valuable to our decision, before we process it to generate an output (an opinion\/view\/decision). In a similar fashion, machines take the input data from different places, organize it, assign a weight to the input, do\u00a0the calculations and then churn out\u00a0possible answers.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWe can see, then, that machines do not and cannot provide definitive answers. In fact, they do not even \u2018know\u2019 the answers at all, given that all they are doing is weighing information and ideas from different sources and then providing the statically most probable right answer. A mistake made by the famous AI computer IBM Watson in the US game show\u00a0Jeopardy!<\/em>\u00a0speaks volumes about this. At the end of the first day of the competition, the category for \u2018Final Jeopardy\u2019 was \u2018US Cities\u2019, and the clue was: \u201cIts largest airport was named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle.\u201d The answer is, \u2018What is Chicago (O\u2019Hare and Midway).\u2019 Watson guessed, \u201cWhat is Toronto?????\u201d Wrong city. Wrong country.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\nThere are many reasons why Watson was confused by this question, including grammatical structure, the presence of a city in Illinois named Toronto and the Toronto Blue Jays playing baseball in the American League. As a result, Watson\u2019s confidence level was incredibly low: 14%\u2026 Watson knew that it didn\u2019t know the answer, as indicated by the five question marks\u2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat makes AI more powerful than ever is the fact that humans can train the machines by feeding them with answers (so-called supervised learning). With this newly ingested information, they can adjust the weighting next time, thereby increasing the accuracy of their responses over time \u2013 just as our brains do.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\nThe fact that machine learning is based on improving its abilities to guess the right answers contrasts strongly with previous attempts at creating AI. Scientists once believed that the best path to coming up with machine intelligence was programming. However, this approach failed, ultimately leading to the so-called \u2018AI winter\u2019, because there were far too many rules that humans had to teach the machines to enable\u00a0them to predict answers accurately. It was not until the recent emergence of probabilistic computing (to replace the deterministic approach) that AI received a second \u2013 and certainly much better \u2013 chance.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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What AI can actually do<\/h3><\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIn reality, AI is therefore rather different to the way many people perceive it. Hence, for executives who are considering employing AI, it is important to recognize that, instead of an almighty means to transform a business with the power to confer a brand new competitive edge, AI is, at the moment, nothing much more than a tool that supports existing business processes. In this sense, in the current business environment at least, it is not as much about AI as IA \u2013 \u2018intelligent assets\u2019 or \u2018assistance\u2019. It just helps us approach business in smarter ways \u2013 in particular, dealing with routine and standardized tasks. This is why most companies are only using AI in pockets rather than in full business transformations. And the sporadic deployments come predominantly in the form of smarter ideas to cut costs (e.g. insurance companies being able to locate and analyse pictures of car accident damage to assess the size of claims), or better ways of helping customers (including using speech recognition to replace telephone PIN codes).\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIn short, the way AI has been shaping businesses is mostly restricted to intelligent automation \u2013 enhancing standardized business processes using AI. Like any other sort of digital transformation, the key to success in employing AI technologies is not digital but transformational.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSo, for any newly acquired AI technologies to excel, changing the existing processes and workflows, and\/or developing new ones, is a must. This, in turn, means that new teams and organizational structures will also have to be introduced. People\u2019s fear of losing their jobs will have to be allayed. Staff will need to be convinced of\u00a0the value of the new AI technology being implemented. Corporate culture may have to change. The success of machines, therefore,\u00a0lies squarely in the success of how the human\u00a0activities surrounding the new technology\u00a0are organized. What AI can actually do mostly\u00a0depends on what humans can actually do\u00a0(see below)\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The winner: alliance<\/h3><\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIt is interesting to see how Hollywood portrays\u00a0AI. Back to\u00a0Star Wars<\/em>. In the films, AI-driven\u00a0\u2013 and even self-aware \u2013 droids like R2-D2\u00a0are best at assisting humans to fly X-wings\u00a0or escape from the Death Star. Even in such a\u00a0technologically advanced world, machines do\u00a0not replace humans.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWe think the same can be said of our world\u00a0right now. There is no doubt that automation\u00a0led by AI and robotics will eliminate many jobs\u00a0in the future. Routine work, be it white- or\u00a0blue-collar, can be expected to be taken up by\u00a0machines. But it is also time to dispel the myth\u00a0around AI to see what it can actually do as a\u00a0tool. Only in this way can we really hold honest\u00a0conversations about how humans and machines\u00a0can forge a new alliance.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tN.B.\u00a0<\/em>Post<\/em><\/a>\u00a0originally posted on Dialogue, published by Duke CE and co-authored by Terence Tse, Mark Esposito, Danny Goh and Hajime Hotta<\/em>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is no doubt that automation led by AI and robotics will eliminate many jobs in the future. Routine work, be it white- or blue-collar, can be expected to be taken up by machines. But it is also time to dispel the myth around AI to see what it can actually do as a tool. Only in this way can we really hold honest conversations about how humans and machines can forge a new alliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":3704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[97],"ppma_author":[3305],"class_list":["post-1901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-ml","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"authors":[{"term_id":3305,"user_id":599,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mark-esposito","display_name":"Mark Esposito","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"Esposito","first_name":"Mark","job_title":"","description":"Mark Esposito<\/a>, Ph.D, is Professor, Bestselling Author & Pioneer in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and Co-Founder of Nexus FrontierTech. He is a Professor at Hult International Business School, a faculty member at Harvard University since 2011, and a fellow at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. He is the co-author of the best seller Understanding How the Future Unfolds: Using DRIVE to Harness the Power of Today's Megatrends. In 2019, his book on AI, The AI Republic, became #1 bestseller. He has been appointed as a global expert for the Fourth Industrial Revolution at World Economic Forum."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1901"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36772,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901\/revisions\/36772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1901"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}