By Keith Dawn
Last week, I spoke about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay and how we should embrace it, not fear it. Yet, over the years, we’ve seen technology evolve to where we can have the answer to a random question in a matter of seconds. Now, just for fun, get a few teenagers in a room with a rotary dial phone and see if they can figure out how to make a call. We’re all spoiled.
When I was in high school, my teachers loved to make us write essays. I remember my friends spending 4 to 5 hours writing theirs out. (I’m dating myself). I, on the other hand, was fortunate.
My parents made me take typing in school. I was a teenager sitting in a typing class with a dozen 15 and 16-year-old girls. Yes, I was the only boy, and yes, it wasn’t that bad. I forgave my parents for making me take that class as I started pounding out my essays in literally 45 minutes throughout high school and college.
That typewriter had created a seismic shift, saving me hours. I had an incredible advantage over my friends who did not learn how to type. However, I wasn’t the most accurate typist. When I made a mistake, I either had to use whiteout, or I had to retype my entire paper.
Thankfully a guy by the name of Steve Jobs and his buddy Woz introduced the world to Apple and overnight, the typewriter was obsolete. Talk about a seismic shift!
Fast-forward to today: we’re just now experiencing a change unlike any other recorded in human history. AI is truly a seismic shift.
I was recently listening to one of the scientists who helped develop AI programs, and he openly admitted that he is scared to death about where this thing might go. He also admitted the advancements we can make, if we do it right, will transform every aspect of human life.
As we go through this shift in our history, here are some random thoughts and findings.
AI feels like a recent phenomenon, but Arthur Samuel developed the first machine learning program in 1959. It’s simply a computer system performing tasks that would normally require human intelligence such as learning, problem-solving, and decision-making. Here are some areas where we’ve seen tremendous advantages:
- Healthcare: AI is already being used for the early detection of diseases, predicting disease outbreaks, analyzing medical images and developing personalized treatment plans.
- Finance: AI is being used for fraud detection, credit scoring, risk management, algorithmic trading and portfolio management.
- Marketing: AI can be used for chatbots to reply and converse with customer segments, predictive analytics, personalized advertising and customer experience optimization.
- Transportation: AI is being used for autonomous vehicles, traffic prediction, route optimization, and fleet management.
- Customer Service: AI is used in customer service for chatbots, voice assistants, and virtual agents to handle predictable customer queries and complaints.
- Education: AI is used in education for personalized learning, student engagement, and automated grading.
As we embrace this new technology, let’s do it intelligently.
Have a successful week.
