Computing power is changing our lives for a few decades and we’re on the brink of a significant jump in computer power form artificial intelligence (AI). A recent article in Fortune magazine titled “Why Deep Learning is Suddenly Changing Your Life” highlighted what’s on the way.
Here’re some interesting takeaways from the article:
Within AI is machine learning, enabling computers to get better at tasks with practice. And within machine learning is deep learning which allows computers to train themselves using multi-layered neural networks and vast quantities of data.
Does that mean it’s time to brace for the inflection point when superintelligent machines start improving themselves without human involvement? Not just yet.
Neural nets are good at recognizing patterns—sometimes as good as or better than we are at it. But they can’t reason. Unsupervised learning remains untracked.
For example, while a radiologist might see thousands of images in his life, a computer can “see” millions.
One researcher says, “It’s not crazy to imagine that this image problem could be solved better by computers, just because they can plow through so much more data than a human could ever do.” The potential advantages are not just greater accuracy and faster analysis, but democratization of services. As the technology becomes standard, eventually every patient will benefit.
And what about better speech recognition? In China whose main language, Mandarin, is difficult to type into a device so speech recognition for Mandarin speakers would be a big help.
And looking to the near future an insider predicted, “A lot of S&P 500 CEOs wished they had started thinking sooner than they did about their Internet strategy. Five years from now there’ll be a number of S&P 500 CEOs wishing they’d started thinking earlier about their AI strategy.”
“AI is the new electricity, just as 100 years ago electricity transformed industry after industry, AI will now do the same.”