The Future of AI
/The field of artificial intelligence has reached a milestone this year, with several developers releasing AI products that can speak and understand the language well enough to hold their own in conversations with humans on sites like Twitter and Quora.
These programs are just the beginning of what many believe will be a great technological revolution, one which could fundamentally alter not just how humans interact with computers - but how they interact with each other. AI products are already running many projects in industries like finance, healthcare, and cybersecurity. We even see it in homes now. Let's look further into such advancements.
Healthcare
Newer AI products can also perform medical diagnoses at rates comparable to or exceeding human doctors. One such example is IBM's Watson, which can use natural language processing to read over 600,000 pieces of medical evidence, 1.6 million journal articles, and clinical trials, all within three seconds.
Watson can even answer questions about rare medical conditions and translate the information into a language that doctors and patients understand.
Financial Industries
AI technologies are also being applied to finance, most notably with algorithmic trading. Algorithmic trading refers to the use of computers to trade stocks automatically based on data like news, prices, and company information.
By using AI, these programs can make complex decisions in much shorter times than humans, leading to much faster trading. For example, the average time for a human trader to decide to buy or sell a stock is 20 seconds. An algorithmic trading program can take only 100 microseconds to decide or one-fifth of a millionth of a second.
Personal Assistance
A company called x.ai has developed an AI.-powered personal assistant that schedules meetings over email. When someone emails the AI assistant, it detects patterns in the email's text to determine who should be attending, what information is relevant, and when the meeting should take place. It then responds with an invitation that includes all of this information in a format that can be easily accepted or declined by accepting or declining. Businesses can even use software like Beautiful.ai for company presentations to make a PowerPoint deck for those meetings quickly, without sacrificing quality.
Cybersecurity
A.I.-powered software is being used for cybersecurity as well, specifically to combat malware. These programs analyze a piece of software for a certain period or until they've reached a pre-determined stopping point and then report their findings.
Future Concerns
Many of the most respected minds in science and technology, including Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking have expressed concern that AI has the potential to become dangerous.
Though some major advancements are being made in this field today, it will likely be years before AI technologies have enough knowledge to warrant these fears. However, the AIs of today are already doing some pretty impressive things, and it's hard to imagine what they'll be able to do tomorrow.
In conclusion, AI can be used to perform medical diagnoses as well as trading, scheduling meetings, and cybersecurity work. Though some of the most respected minds in science have expressed concerns that AI will become dangerous, they are being applied to many projects today with even greater advances expected tomorrow.
