Month: December 2017

Reviewing last year’s AI-related forecasts (2017)

This time last year I made some forecasts about how AI would change, and how it would change us. It’s time to look back and see how those forecasts for 2017 panned out. A bit rubbish, to be honest – five out of 12 by my reckoning. Must do better. Machines will equal or surpass human performance in more cognitive and motor skills. For instance, speech recognition in noisy environments, and aspects of NLP – Natural Language Processing. Google subsidiary DeepMind will be involved in several of the breakthroughs.   A machine called Libratus beat some of the best human...
Putting your money where your mouth is

Putting your money where your mouth is

Robert Atkinson and I have made the 749th Long Bet shown above (and online here). Robert is president and founder of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. Robert’s claim With the rise of AI and robotics many now claim that these technologies will improve exponentially and in so doing destroy tens of millions of jobs, leading to mass unemployment and the need for Universal Basic Income. I argue that these technologies are no different than past technology waves and to the extent they boost productivity that will create offsetting spending and investment, leading to offsetting job...
Some AI forecasts for 2018

Some AI forecasts for 2018

1. Almost all big non-tech companies will work hard to deploy AI – and to be seen to be doing so. One consequence will be the growth of “insights-as-a-service”, where external consultants are hired to apply machine learning to corporate data. Some of these consultants will be employees of Google, Microsoft and Amazon, looking to make their open source tools the default option (e.g. Google’s TensorFlow, Microsoft’s CNTK, Amazon’s MXNet). 2. The first big science breakthrough that could not have been made without AI will be announced. (I stole this from DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis.  I want to get at least...