Artificial intelligence’s impact on the world has already been felt in a variety of ways, from chess computers to search engine algorithms to a chatbot so convincing that a Google researcher thinks it’s sentient. So what’s the future of AI?
Obviously, the future of AI can’t be predicted any more than tomorrow’s lottery numbers can. But even as the research in the field drives the technology further and further, we can put our futurist caps on and speculate about what the world might look like in an AI-driven future.
For clarity, we’ll focus on the AI advances in the world of business, yet we’ll also paint a picture of the world at-large as well.
The Future of AI in Popular Culture
Fiction can have an impact on real-world scientific research. Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics – laid out in his short story Runaround – have been part of the discussion of ethics in AI since the field began, even if modern ethical discussions tend to view Asimov’s laws as a fair but lacking starting point.
In these fictional portrayals, there is much anxiety about AI’s use as a weapon. Arguably the most famous fictional instance of AI is either HAL 9000 of 2001: A Space Odyssey or the Terminators from the franchise of the same name. Both properties deal with AI trying to kill humans by any means necessary.
However, AI is just as often portrayed as heroic as monstrous, though its weapon status is often still at the forefront. Many readers might remember The Iron Giant, wherein a 50-foot-tall alien robot struggles with its identity and the United States military before ultimately deciding it’d rather be Superman than a weapon.
These anxieties over AI-as-weapon, well-founded or not, are influential on modern AI-related policy. As recently as 2019, the U.N. was discussing the banning of lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), which calls to mind the exact sort of “killer robot” anxieties present in our fiction.
Continue reading: https://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/artificial-intelligence-future/
Obviously, the future of AI can’t be predicted any more than tomorrow’s lottery numbers can. But even as the research in the field drives the technology further and further, we can put our futurist caps on and speculate about what the world might look like in an AI-driven future.
For clarity, we’ll focus on the AI advances in the world of business, yet we’ll also paint a picture of the world at-large as well.
The Future of AI in Popular Culture
Fiction can have an impact on real-world scientific research. Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics – laid out in his short story Runaround – have been part of the discussion of ethics in AI since the field began, even if modern ethical discussions tend to view Asimov’s laws as a fair but lacking starting point.
In these fictional portrayals, there is much anxiety about AI’s use as a weapon. Arguably the most famous fictional instance of AI is either HAL 9000 of 2001: A Space Odyssey or the Terminators from the franchise of the same name. Both properties deal with AI trying to kill humans by any means necessary.
However, AI is just as often portrayed as heroic as monstrous, though its weapon status is often still at the forefront. Many readers might remember The Iron Giant, wherein a 50-foot-tall alien robot struggles with its identity and the United States military before ultimately deciding it’d rather be Superman than a weapon.
These anxieties over AI-as-weapon, well-founded or not, are influential on modern AI-related policy. As recently as 2019, the U.N. was discussing the banning of lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), which calls to mind the exact sort of “killer robot” anxieties present in our fiction.
Continue reading: https://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/artificial-intelligence-future/
