Artificial Intelligence (AI) or machine learning have become a crucial part of our daily lives. For the first time, artificial intelligence is being used to create self-driving cars, to find the perfect song, find the best phone, and make better websites. Here, we look at how artificial intelligence is already transforming industries, and how it’s going to affect everything in the years ahead.
Industries using artificial intelligence:
Automobile & Transportation: Artificial intelligence will play an increasingly important role in the automobile industry. Google (now Waymo), an American artificial intelligence firm has been working on self-driving cars since its inception in 2015. The self-driving car has already been tested on freeways, and it has performed well. Uber is one of the companies that have adopted self-driving cars, and hopes that it will make them more accessible to the average person in the future.
With the increase in use of self-driving cars and the reduced costs of making them, the process of manufacturing them will change, making them cheaper. The process of manufacturing the self-driving car will move from the car manufacturers to the network of companies that make the parts needed to assemble a car.
Food and agriculture: Most of the main ingredients in your favourite foods are a natural by-product of the Amazon Rainforest. Two-thirds of all the products sold in our supermarkets are grown by plants in other countries. A process called “transplanting” is being developed, using machine-learning algorithms to decide the best time to transport a crop of bananas from the Amazon to the United States.
Healthcare and medicine:In the coming decades, AI systems will assist healthcare practitioners like radiologists and surgeons in the evaluation and diagnosis of diseases. Researchers are currently working on algorithms that will decide whether a person is cognitively impaired, and could be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
The ability to diagnose and treat diseases in infants and toddlers is very limited. New parents of young children have been concerned that their babies have illnesses such as asthma, and can’t afford medical treatments. The introduction of a device that uses AI algorithms to decide when a baby needs to be referred to a specialist is now being tested in hospitals around the world.
Agricultural: Researchers use machine learning to create detailed maps of trees, providing a wealth of information about their health. An algorithm can identify insect damage, determine whether a tree is mature or growing towards the light, and predict the average lifespan of a tree.
This could go beyond one’s imagination where AI will help us in the ways that we do agriculture today.
Exercise: While exercise is a major part of maintaining a healthy life, the motivation of most people to exercise decreases as they get older. In the future, AI can be used to monitor the lifestyles of people, and then be able to motivate them to participate in a variety of exercises. In addition to being physically active, people will be able to participate in virtual reality courses, such as virtual yoga. They will also be able to participate in online-learning courses as well as play games for fitness. Even when they don’t do physical activity, they’ll be able to spend time working on virtual fitness equipment. The future is looking quite promising for those who want to stay fit.
Banking: Artificial intelligence will soon play a vital role in making loans.
Another AI algorithm that is currently being tested will use machine learning to evaluate loan applicants, and decide whether a borrower is likely to repay a loan.
Loan companies use large databases to make these decisions, so it’s estimated that 10-20% of loans could be provided by a machine before 2029.
Video and broadcast industries: AI is already used in the broadcasting industry to identify and remove speech that would upset or confuse people, but as the algorithm improves, it will be used to allow people to talk about their favourite sports teams without giving away information to their opponents.
Non-fiction publishing: Non-fiction books are slowly being replaced by the electronic book. AI algorithms can now identify the areas that readers are interested in, such as recipes, lists of links, or abstracts from academic papers. Amazon, the world’s biggest book seller, has partnered with a company called Azeotrope to make sure the algorithm improves, and the service can recommend books for new readers.
It’s estimated that 60% of books sold in Amazon’s Kindle App Store are self-published. The ability for AI algorithms to determine which books people will buy, and make recommendations is likely to have an even bigger impact on the publishing industry.
E-commerce: Amazon has already demonstrated an AI algorithm that allows for self-service for a product listing, creating a virtual meeting room for people to meet in, and then meet in the real world. It allows people to interact with sellers using artificial intelligence.
Airlines and logistics: There’s an algorithm that can allow airlines to show potential customers how much capacity is available at any time. Instead of focusing on fees, which can be confusing for customers, it can present information in a way that shows how much room there is to accept customers.
AI systems have also been used to find what’s causing delays at airports, and how to make the most efficient use of airspace.
AI is also being used to create a system that will allow some airports to reduce the number of hours that they need to be open. It’s a change that could mean airports could be able to open on days when there is little demand.
How machine learning is already changing our lives:
When was the last time you woke up in the morning and found your phone “talking” to you about something that was really happening? How about the internet? What if all of the websites you use were learning about you based on the way you’ve been using them in the past? In the future, your web browser is likely to do the same thing. We’re beginning to see artificial intelligence systems that give us recommendations based on the interests we’ve been shown, and the items we’ve rated highly in the past.
In a shopping mall, the shoes you’ve looked at often, in a store, and the people you’ve seen look like they’re wearing the same shoes. Amazon has integrated this shopping concept into its Amazon Go store, and allows a person to just walk through a door, and out comes a basket with all of the items that are in it.
What it’s likely to mean for our lives
The big shift that we’re likely to see is the way we interact with the world around us. The use of smartphones is growing rapidly, and as these devices learn to do more, the potential for interaction is immense.
We’re already seeing “body cams” in shopping malls, allowing people to use AI to learn about their body language, and adapt their speech to those around them. In the future, we’ll see systems that will adapt to us, based on what we’ve shown to be valuable.
There are already many systems that use AI, such as self-driving cars, speech recognition, recommender systems, and image recognition. Some of these systems are already improving our lives every day.
There is a chance that we’re moving into a world where we’re less knowledgeable about how things work. We’ve all had our own frustrations at learning things, such as learning how to use a new phone, or how to install new software. These days, we depend on Google or YouTube for more complex systems. As these systems become more intelligent, people will become less confident when learning new things.
As we become less knowledgeable about things, our opportunities will also change. This is a consequence of the way that technology is changing the way that people learn, and a change that might not be a bad thing.
The overall impact that AI is having on our lives will be tremendous. It’s likely to transform how we interact with each other, and our ability to work together.
AI is already changing our lives, but in the future, we will see it transforming how we live, how we work, and even the way we interact with each other.