Is Artificial Intelligence a Fashion?

Artificial intelligence and robotics will affect almost all occupations, but how that will occur for each is unclear. Many people will be displaced by technology, while the demand for other jobs will increase. New industries will be born, and other as-yet-unimagined jobs created.

The Milan Theory describes a marketplace for IS fashion, where the Demand set by users of IS trends, based on Socio-psychological and techno-economic forces they experience. This demand is then acted upon by the Supply, who consists of Consultants, Gurus, Business Schools and Mass media.  So who is promoting this trend and driving this fashion? Regarding the global market, the United States and the United Kingdom have a significant share of 70% of the market together with many European countries. Tech Giants like Google, Apple and Microsoft have invested over 1 billion dollars in driving AI innovation.  We can already see the mass demand for the products and services generated by these organisations. Comparisons of the academic and practitioner world, the influencers are the practitioners with the academic community lagging behind.

In the Herd Behaviour theory, when choosing to adopt ICT people go with the crowd’s choice when they are uncertain about their chose, sometimes even when it is not necessarily better than their choosing (Sun, 2013). Onalytica analysed 1.1M+ tweets from 30 November 2015 – 24 February 2016 mentioning the keywords “#AI OR “Artificial Intelligence” OR ArtificialIntelligence OR “Machine Learning” OR Machine learning” and identified the top 100 most influential brands and individuals leading the discussion on Twitter. The increase in both academic and practitioner publications in this move suggest that this is indeed a fashion.

It is apparent that Artificial Intelligence is indeed a fashion in IS that has been trending upwards and continued to do so.

 

References

Baskerville, R. L., & Myers, M. D. (2009). Fashion waves in information systems research and practice.Mis Quarterly, 647-662.

Sun, H. (2013). A longitudinal study of herd behavior in the adoption and continued use of technology.Mis Quarterly, 37(4), 1013-1041.

Press Article Response

My response to a news article on “Tech leaders at Davos fret over effect of AI on jobs” in the financial times 2017.

https://www.ft.com/content/744ad7fa-de66-11e6-9d7c-be108f1c1dce

The article highlights the concerns by leaders of the leading tech giants on the consequences of Artificial Intelligence. Some of the notable attendees were IBM’s Ginni Rometty, Salesforces Marc Benioff and Microsoft Chief Satya Nadella.

Some of the outcomes discussed were the displacement of Jobs, inequality and concentrating the immense wealth of just a few people. Leaders in Silicon Valley are latching on to the idea of “universal basic income”: the state will pay people the minimum that they need to live

My view on “Universal basic income” is not going to be enough to avoid social upheaval in a world where most people define themselves through work. That would be a paradigm shift, at least in western societies, which will not be achievable overnight.

Everyone in the 1970s and 1980s believed automation would lead to increased leisure time as robots would be doing so much of the work. Many boring, dull and repetitive jobs could be done by robots freeing human beings up for better things. We also need to reflect much more on exclusion. The techier our societies get, the more ‘not techy’ people are excluded. The life expectancy of individuals is also expected to increase with the latest technologies

According to (Gurstein 2013) These technologies will have the effect of ‘transforming’ large areas of the economy, of society and of culture as they come to perform functions which previously had not understood as being capable of automation. The exercise of reason in the analysis of reality, the making of judgements based on partial or ambiguous information, the capacity to ‘learn’ from one’s environment are all characteristics which will now to a greater or lesser extent be shared with machines.

After reading the article, I feel somewhat that major corporations are going through with implementing technologies regardless of the mass displacement of jobs and ethical issues that arise with it. AI has become a business requirement rather than an option.

Influencers of AI – Analysis

So who is promoting this trend and driving this fashion? Regarding the global market, the United States and the United Kingdom have a significant share of 70% of the market together with many European countries.

Global Market Share of AI 2016

In 2010 Facebook introduced facial recognition technology, and in 2013 Zuckerberg dedicated a lab to AI research. In 2014 Google bought artificial intelligence start-up DeepMind for $400 million. Microsoft has also been investing heavily in AI with their project Oxford, which uses an emotion detection service that can assign an emotion to a person depending on their facial expression. This kind of facial recognition allows photos to be edited depending on the feelings expressed in them.

IBM have also been making large strides in AI with their Watson computer which famously won the US quiz show Jeopardy in 2011, outperforming his human counterparts. IBM and have now teamed up with Nvidia incorporating their GPUs, making Watson 1.7 faster at responding to inquiries. IBM is also developing a teaching assistant app that will plan lessons based on approved material.

Apple has bought artificial intelligence start-up Emotient and while it’s not entirely clear what Apple’s plans are, reports suggest that the acquisition will centre on facial recognition technology and customers reaction to ads. Apple has also acquired UK-based AI Company Vocal IQ with reports suggesting that they are aiming to develop Siri further and use Vocal IQ’s speech AI software.

Top 100 most influential brands and individuals

Onalytica analysed 1.1M+ tweets from 30 November 2015 – 24 February 2016 mentioning the keywords “#AI OR “Artificial Intelligence” OR ArtificialIntelligence OR “Machine Learning” OR Machinelearning” and identified the top 100 most influential brands and individuals leading the discussion on Twitter (see above illustration)

The following map organises the AI sector into 13 categories and shows the influencers of companies in each category.

Influencers of AI Companies in 13 Categories  

Comparing the Academic Vs practitioner world, the influencers are the practitioners with the academic world lagging behind.

Implications for Implementing AI

What are the implications for implementing AI?

If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?

The World Economic Forum has indicated that there will be Net loss of over 5 million jobs in 15 major developed and emerging economies by 2020. It’s just less than 3 years away.

A study by Oxford University in 2016 ranked a select group of occupations by their probability of becoming automatable.  In essence what jobs can be completely done by a machine? As you can notice on the ranking, white collar jobs, administrative and jobs with repetitive tasks rank quite highly.

source: Oxford University 2016

Google self driving car now called WAYMO has already racked over 2 million self driven miles so it’s no surprise that there is a 89% possibility of a taxi drivers job been done by self driving car.  In order for it to be successful – it does not have to be perfect but be less error prone than humans.

JP Morgan a global financial services firm recently unveiled new internal technology that reviews contracts using machine learning which is faster and more accurate than any human. The software robot is called Contract Intelligence (COIN); it literally reads contract loan agreements and could save 360,000 legal hours annually.

Machines are unable to match humans in tasks that require social and creative skills. The 3 main spheres which AI is yet to make a significant impact is Manipulation, creativity and social perception.

Jobs such as oral surgeons, Choreographers and mental health works are pretty still difficult for machines to automate. However the is a lot research into these areas and we could soon find a change in these areas in the next 20 years

source: Indiana University

Research conducted by Indiana University in resolving health cases prove that AI increases productivity and lowers costs. The study showed with AI 42% increases in productivity and a 59% reduction in costs. Imagine the cost saving by the health care providers that would be passed on to the patient – affordable healthcare in to far reaching rural areas.

People are jumping way ahead in saying there will be massive job losses. If used for efficiency, yes there will be some displacement of labour. But the fact is there have always been other jobs created with the advancement of technology. There is NO concrete evidence to suggest that there will be massive unemployment across all sectors. We haven’t ended up in a situation where there is high unemployment as a result of IT

Artificial intelligence, coupled with human capacity, has huge potential to change the way we do business today. With the cut to costs, the increase in productivity, and the ease of operations, AI is becoming less of an option and more of a business requirement. Will we reach a state where “Humans Need Not Apply”? It’s highly unlikely at least for now…

The History of Artificial Intelligence

“Within a generation […] the problem of creating ‘artificial intelligence’ will substantially be solved,”

Marvin Minsky

In order to under the impact AI will have on our future, I think it would be beneficial to understand its origins and history. I was quite surprised during my research that AI is not a concept that was discovered 20 years but traits of it as far back as the late 1800’s. Let me give you a brief overview of the contributors.

In 1847 a formal language for logic reasoning was discovered by George Boole. The next milestone in AI history was in 1936, when Alan Turing described the Turing-machine. Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts created the model of artificial neurons in 1943 and Marvin Minsky and Dean Edmonds created the first neural computer in 1951. It was not until 1956 when John McCarthy first coined the term “Artificial Intelligence” at a conference at Dartmouth.

Achieving any form of AI proved to be a challenging process.  After several reports criticizing progress in AI, government funding and interest in the field dropped off – a period from 1974–1980 that became known as the “AI winter.” The field later revitalized in the 1980s when the British government started funding it again in part to compete with efforts by the Japanese.

The field experienced another major winter from 1987 to 1993, coinciding with the collapse of the market for some of the early general-purpose computers, and reduced government funding.

But research began to pick up again after that, and in 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue became the first computer to beat a chess champion when it defeated Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov.

Today AI plays a significant role in our daily lives. I am keen to explore the impact of this revolution on our jobs. With billions of Dollars of investment and the creation of numerous AI start-ups, we could soon be experiencing innovations that we’ve only seen in the movies. Speaking of movies, witnessing a T-500 patrolling our streets is though still decades away…

What is Artificial Intelligence and is it a Trend?

What is Artificial Intelligence –  Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans improve over time by learning from experience

According to Gartner ( www.gartner.com  ) Artificial Intelligence  (AI)  is included in the “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2017”

There has been significant investment into AI research and development. If we look into the revenue projections of  AI leading up to 2025 we can see significant growth in this major trend.

figure 1 (source – https://www.statista.com).

With the investment injection of billions of dollars into AI we can expect significant advances into an ever growing marketplace.

A further look into the number published journals reveals an upward trajectory over a 10 year period.

figure 2 (source – www.scopus.com)

Based on the research above, AI is certainly a trending topic in the Information Technology space.

The focal goals of AI research comprise of  reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, natural language processing or communication, perception and the ability to move and manipulate objects.

Here are popular AI systems that perhaps you didn’t even know used some form of Artificial Intelligence:

Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, has transformed over the years from being a fairly simple voice assistant to being a fully-fledged digital assistant.

IBM’s Watson – one of the highest profile AI projects – is a supercomputer that reveals insights from unstructured big data through machine learning and natural language processing.

Prisma – is an iOS app that uses AI to turn your photos into art pieces. It’s more than a filter as it creates the art from scratch.

Amazon Echo brings artificial intelligence into the home through the intelligent voice server, Alexa.

Netflix provides highly accurate predictive technology based on customer’s reactions to films

Googles self driving car which is equipped with self-driving equipment powered by AI.

There is a great fear that this exponential explosion of technology arising from AI will result in a loss of Jobs. We could potentially see displacement in which people losing their current jobs,  augmentation which current jobs are done better with AI technology and the creation of new jobs.

It is more than likely that these avenues will result in new and different interaction between machines and humans.