Last Updated on January 6, 2023 by Raoul Patel
AI is Ready to Make a Real Difference in Our Lives
No longer pie in the sky, much heralded and sometimes feared artificial intelligence (AI) is set to begin impacting our daily lives.
Sophia, the AI-powered robot designed by AI developer David Hanson and Hanson Robotics wowed the world in 2017 with her humour and intelligence, causing a media storm. Sophia brought questions about AI’s capabilities and potential impact, good and bad, to the fore once again.
Though no one can yet truly answer how far AI will go and what that will mean for society what is abundantly clear is that AI is now part of our daily lives and it has resounding benefits.
PwC estimates that AI adoption will add value in the form of $15.7 trillion to global GDP by 2030. That value isn’t all going to come from the revenue of AI companies, as you’d expect, but instead from the application of AI to conventional industries.
AI’s automation of repetitive tasks
Robotic process automation (RPA) is the utilisation of AI and AI-powered machines and software for repetitive and routine tasks. Kai-Fu Lee, CEO of Sinovation Ventures, writing for Wired posits examples such as accounts payable, back-office processing, and data management, but robots are already being used in factories and on production lines for repetitive work.
AI and RPA also have massive benefits for cybersecurity, one of the greatest challenges for businesses today. Used in cybersecurity tools, AI and machine learning can process massive amounts of data and learn to spot tiny anomalies in corporate systems that could indicate a cyber attack or data breach. AI and RPA powered cybersecurity software is able to continually scan, check, and re check computer networks in real time and far faster and more effectively than human action.
Though it’s argued that AI will create jobs and free humans for more challenging and innovative roles, and to process AI’s results, AI will also change workforces, reducing the number of manual jobs available in society.
As well as back-office tasks, cybersecurity and production, 2020 will see AI used more prevalently in customer service, call centres, and telemarketing. AI’s speech recognition and natural-language processing was aptly demonstrated by the robot Sophia and it has developed since. AI-powered customer service bots can easily answer basic banking and shopping questions, referring more complicated questions to human colleagues. AI can also recommend products, even financial services, mark homework, and guide students.
The technology can even automate art and design processes. As per Emily Daniel and Mashable, AI’s impact in the computer graphics sector could be immense. Consider the digital media, movies, and games we consume daily. Digital graphics take human artists innumerate hours to replicate but Daniel says:
“AI is being used to improve things like ray tracing and rasterization to create a cheaper and quicker method of rendering hyperrealistic graphics in computer games.”
Emily Daniel from Mashable
We’re truly entering an age of digital transformation, AI like other emerging and existing technologies will continue to change every part of our daily lives.
In healthcare, AI may take longer to become integrated but like its application to cybersecurity, AI and machine learning can absorb billions of items of data. By modelling data, like symptoms and outcomes, AI may be able to spot health anomalies and diagnose potential problems faster than human doctors.
