AI Superpowers

AI Superpowers will help you understand what to expect of the effect that artificial intelligence will have on your future job opportunities by diving into where China and the US, the world’s two leaders in AI, are heading with this breakthrough technology.

Many years ago the idea of artificial intelligence was mere science fiction. But we’re long past that point. All of us wonder where the technology is heading and what it will change about our lives.

The author speaks on this subject at many schools and conferences. Chinese schoolchildren ask the same questions as CEOs. They wonder if they’re going to get AI teachers or the kind of jobs that will be available to them. I think those are things we all want to know!

Making computers as intelligent as humans dates back to the 1950s. John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, for example, were two researchers with a desire to embed human intellect into computers. By the time of the author’s entry into the field in the early 80s, there were two camps: rule-based and neural network.

Rule-based folks thought to teach machines one law at a time. Those on the neural network side let computers learn on their own and develop intelligence with experience. But these machines needed a lot of data to grow.

This problem was solved in the early 2000s when AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton had a breakthrough that significantly multiplied processing power. His new algorithm smashed the competition at visual recognition in a 2012 contest. This was when the technology began going by the new name of deep learning and opened the way for countless possibilities.

So, will AI bring a prosperous future, or will it mean the destruction of mankind? While the idea of Terminator robots taking over isn’t realistic, many of us do wonder if we’ll be able to hold a job when AI can do it for us. Experts like Ray Kurzweil believe that machines are the tool that can finally upgrade our own bodies and minds. We can get smarter and live longer with this technology. Another AI researcher by the name of Demis Hassabis has the vision that AI can help us cure diseases and end problems like climate change. On the other side, however, we’ve got Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking. These two and others in their camp see AI as a threat to our species. You might get a computer to provide a solution to global warming, but what happens when part of that is the eradication of humans from the planet? Economically there’s a great divide as well. This mostly comes from a 2013 Oxford study that declared 47% of US jobs are at risk of automation.…