Many years ago, renowned American futurist Ray Kuzweil made the prediction that “by 2029, computers will have emotional intelligence and be as convincing as people.” He was not wrong. Artificial or Augmented Intelligence - AI - systems are rapidly taking on more tasks and solving problems around the world. Today, ten years ahead of Ray’s prediction, it is difficult to say which is rising faster: our interest in AI systems or our fear of them!

The term AI is thrown around constantly, but most of us do not understand what precisely it means. One recent study even found that 40 % of European companies that claim to be working on or using AI do NOT actually use it at all. There is an urgent need for more people to learn about and understand AI as it will undoubtedly design our shared Human future.

Silicon Valley data engineers and scientists are at the forefront of constructing and understanding AI systems and the benefits they may hold for humanity. There’s a lot of pride here in northern California for innovation facilitated by machine intelligence. Some of the most well-known examples include IBM’s Watson, Google’s driverless cars, Facebook’s face recognition, DeepMind programmes for Go and Chess, speech recognition programmes such as Alexa and Siri, Google Translate, and product recommendation algorithms used by Netflix, Amazon, and other companies.

Data scientists we’ve met in San Francisco explained that human intelligence results from 12 typical features and eight mental mechanisms (see footnote at bottom of article for comprehensive list). Together, they provide a total of 20 benchmarks for evaluating artificial intelligence. Data scientist Paul Thagard explained that each AI system reproduces specific intelligence features. For example, IBM Watson successfully carries out certain tasks like problem-solving and learning, among others, but is weak on abstracting and feeling. Driverless cars may be adept at perceiving, decision-making, and communicating, but they do little abstracting and understanding. Tant mieux !

Due to these present shortcomings in AI, data scientists in Silicon Valley have a reassuring message for concerned citizens of the world: “No! Machines will not entirely replace human workers.” AI experts recognize that there will always be a need for mankind’s thinking broadly and creatively. After all, it is human data engineers, probably the most sought-after workers in today’s job market, who breathe life into AI.

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“Siri, please find me an Indian restaurant”.

Conversational AI is increasingly a focus for Silicon Valley innovators.Christopher Chen, whom I met yesterday in San Bruno, is a former attorney turned Tech enthusiast. He works for LiftIgniter - a start-up which offers a personalization service for content recommendations. Basically, Christopher and his team of engineers try to assist media around the world to harness the same techniques as Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, or Netflix. Chen explained to me that “We live in the attention economy. Customers now expect personalized experiences across different platforms. Digital properties must personalize to earn their customers’ attention.” Data engineers and scientists are hard at work capturing data on user behavior and then use machine learning algorithms to classify which items are most likely to be clicked on for each individual user. The idea is that machine learning will facilitate better, more engaging user experiences by enabling content creators to publish the best content and items in front of each individual user at each click. The objective is to get websites & apps to react in real-time to their users.

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There is a reason that half the world’s tech billionaires live in Silicon Valley. In California’s tech belt, AI is not perceived as a mysterious, lurking overlord of the future, but rather the latest means to enrich the world. AI may eventually permeate every industry and aspect of human life, but in a world that is always changing regardless, it is extremely important, essentially necessary, to adapt and innovate. We have the assurances of leading experts that AI cannot fully replace the work that human beings perform, so let’s sit back and just enjoy the ride.

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According to San Francisco Chronicle, hopes that “the tech industry was on the cusp of rolling personal robots into homes are dimming now that several oncepromising consumer robotics companies have shut down.”The latest casualty was San Francisco startup Anki, maker of the playful toy robot Cozmo, which upon its release in 2016 seemed like the start of a new wave of sociable machines.That dream ended this week when Anki CEO and co-founder Boris Sofman gathered many of the company’s nearly 200 employees to deliver the news that all of them would be laid off…

Footnotes:

The 12 typical features that human intelligence results from are perceiving, problem-solving, learning, reasoning, abstracting, planning, deciding, understanding, feeling, acting, creating, and communicating. These 12 features operate in human minds by virtue of eight mental mechanisms that include imagery, concepts, rules, analogy, emotions, actions based on intentions, language, and consciousness.