You've probably heard the dire warnings about Aritificial Intelligence displacing a lot of jobs or even taking over the world.
AI
is going to cause market disruption, as it introduces amazing new
levers of productivity and saves countless man hours of labor. That
doesn't mean opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship are going
to dry up. In fact, it's more likely they'll multiply.
AI will
allow your devices to update and optimize themselves, without the need
for additional software, patches or even a connection to the Internet.
Your phone's operating system, for example, may be the same as everyone
else's when it leaves the factory. But after a short time of use, it
will adjust to any issues that specifically come up for you as you use
it. It will optimize itself based on the way you use it. It will
identify and take out malware on its own. Of course you can always reset
to factory defaults, but in the meantime, your phone's operating system
will be unique, just like you.
There could also be software
forums that are actual software forums, literally. You would opt in to a
cloud based service and your devices software could share information
and experiences with similar software that may have encountered similar
issues with more or less success. They could exchange bits of software
like bacteria exchange genetic information. Yes, your devices software
could have their own social pages.
That's just scratching the
surface. It will get even weirder, I'm sure. But is it anything to worry
about? On the contrary. It's something to get excited about. Computers
can process massive amounts of data in short periods of time. They can
do so objectively, without rest or emotion, and they can compare results
of processes to set goals, then make adjustments according to whether
the most recent operation was more or less successful than the one
before. Calculations and problem solving in areas that can be boiled
down to math problems is an area that humans will not be able to beat
computers at, and that's okay.
Computers and smart devices execute
for the user. It is the user that defines the task and sets the
parameters (defines what success means). You'll want to set the bar
ridiculously high. If your device actually meets your goal, it'll stop
improving, so you want to make the target impossibly ideal, or very
close. What you can do that your device cannot is change the goals, add
goals, subtract goals or tasks, redefine what success means in one area
or another, and you don't have to have a rational explanation for any of
it. Your device exists to help you get what you want. Your role is to
figure out what you want.
We can make highly intelligent machines,
but we cannot give them free will. Will they ever develop free will? I
don't know, but free will is more than looking human and mimicking human
body language and voice inflection. You'll know it's time to worry when
your autonomous transportation pod decides it doesn't want to cart you
around anymore, runs away from home and gets a job delivering oranges
cross country for the black market. Unless/until that happens, it may be
time to start thinking along the lines of "If I didn't have to do
anything, what would I do?" That's the real promise of AI. Bring it on!