Investing in AI offers more benefits than risks.

Author: KR Sanjiv - Technical Director at Wipro

It is difficult to predict how the technology of artificial intelligence will develop in the next 10-20 years, but the potential for profits is huge . By 2018, robots will manage the work of more than 3 million people; By 2020, smart machines will become the main investment target for more than a third of corporate executives in investment policy.

Many areas of activity, from journalism to customer service, are already served by AI, which can more and more accurately reproduce people's actions and learn from our experience. What once seemed to be the technology of the future is already knocking on the door, and the only remaining question is how it will be introduced into the mass market.

Over time, the development of the industrial world, which is now in the tail and into the mane uses AI, improving these developments in the process, will become more reliable and useful for a number of areas. Organizations that can afford to invest heavily in AI create a powerful impetus for more companies to follow their example. Those who cannot afford this will have to occupy the remaining niches, risking being left behind by innovation.
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Risk against profit

Although someone may think that it is impossible to predict what is more in the application of AI in business risks or profits, analysts predict that by 2020, 5% of all commercial transactions will be processed by autonomous software agents.

The future of AI depends on companies willing to take the risk and invest in it, regardless of the possible difficulties, ready to conduct a research of the technology and finance its continuous improvement. Some are already unknowingly investing in new technologies, like the company that has paid a total of more than half a million dollars to its programmer for 6 years, and eventually found out that it has automated its work.

Many of the developments in the field of AI come to us from the military sphere. Only the US government needs $ 4.6 billion to fund drones next year to replace the currently used drones driven by unmanned humans. AI drones need only set a destination, and they bypass the air defense objects and make their own route, while the “murderous” decisions are made by people.

The logic is: the risk of being left out is much higher than the advantages of a cautious approach to this issue.

Institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Oxford are working hard to study the brain and imitate its work. There are two ways: creating an AI that reproduces the complex algorithms of the human brain or a replica, which raises some ethical questions. For example, what rights should an AI have? And what happens when the server on which the replica of a loved one's brain is stored falls?

Although there are no answers to these questions yet, the obvious advantages of AI for all sectors of activity will force all major players in all sectors of the economy to use the technology. Everyone should understand that, like any other technological advances that have become an integral part of modern industry, artificial intelligence will also become an indispensable tool.

The future of computing

Until recently, AI meant creating preliminary programming tools for specific tasks. And the functions were extremely inflexible. Similar schemes based on AI have become generally accepted. The future of AI is self-learning. In other words, the AI ​​should no longer receive direct commands to understand what is required of it.

GPS systems are now being used, which depend on an automated perceptual and learning scheme — mobile devices that can interpret speech and search engines that learn to interpret our intentions. It is programming that makes such developments as Google DeepMind and Watson IBM the next step in the development of AI.

DeepMind has not been pre-programmed: there are no specific programs or modules for specific tasks. DeepMind learns by itself. The system is specifically designed for generality, so that the end result is an independent property. Independent properties, such as the ability to beat Go Grandmasters, are even more impressive when you realize that no one programmed DeepMind with this.

As a rule, AI is very limited and can only perform what it has been programmed for, but Olli- the robot car from Watson learns how to work and communicate with passengers. Every time a new passenger requests a recommendation or destination, the car remembers the information to work with the next person. New sensors are constantly being added, and the car (as a human driver) will “grow wiser” all the time during work.

But can AI systems do what companies such as Google expect from them: for example, anticipate users' buying habits better than the software they use now? Or dynamically optimize the production and sales cycle based on past trends? This is where real money lies; it's a much more difficult task than playing, driving, and performing repetitive actions.

The fact that various AI platforms are now able, such as choosing the most appropriate clothing or predicting health problems, clearly indicates that AI is expanding, and more complex tasks will be available in the near future.

Soon the AI ​​will be able to imitate complex human decision-making processes, for example, give advice on investments or prescribe medications to patients. In fact, given the ongoing training, the first level support and dangerous work (for example, driving trucks) will be fully carried out by robots, which will lead to a new industrial revolution, and people will have time to solve problems instead of performing repetitive actions.

The price of abstaining from investing in AI

The benefits and risks of investing are vague, incomprehensible and are the subject of discussion. One known risk common to all innovations is uncertainty. That is, while the risks are mainly associated with potentially unsuccessful investments, and this is no longer new in the world of finance.

And although these technologies are strange and new, everyone is of the opinion that the risk of being left out is much higher and more serious than the advantages of cautious behavior in this matter.

Original: Investing in AI offers more offers