Artificial Intelligence

The incredible inventions of Artificial Intelligence

Over the course of next 20 years, more will change around the way we do our work than has happened in the last 2000 years.In fact, I think we are at the dawn of anew age in human history. Now there are 4 major historical eras defined by the way we work.

The Hunter Gatherer Age lasted several millions years, then the agricultural age lasted several thousand years. The Industrial Age lasted a couple of centuries. Now the information age has lasted just a few decades. Now today we are on the cusp of our great era as a species. WELCOME TO THE AUGMENTED AGE. 

In this new era, your natural human capabilities are going to be augmented by computational systems that help you think, robotics systems that help you make, and a digital nervous system that connect you to the world far beyond your natural senses.

COGNITIVE AUGMENTATION

I would actually argue that we are already augmented. Imagine that you are in party and somebody asks you a question that you don't know the answer to. If you have phone with Siri or Google you can know the answer in few seconds.

But this is just a primitive beginning. Even Siri is just a passive tool. In fact, for the last three and a half million years, the tools that we had have been completely passive. They do exactly what we tell them and nothing more.

Tools are making the leap from being passive to being generative. Generative design tools use a computer and algorithm to synthesis geometry to come up with new designs all by themselves. All it needs are your goals and your constraints.

So computers can now generate, they can come up with their own solutions to our well defined problems. But they are not intuitive and that's because they never learn. Interestingly, that's exactly what computer scientists have been trying to get A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) to do for last 60 years.

Back in 1952 computer scientist built a computer that could play Tic-Tac-Toe. Then 45 years later, in 1997, Deep Blue beats Kaspurov at chess. 2011 Watson beats two person at jeopardy, which is much harder for a computer to play than chess is.

In fact, rather than working from predefined recipes, Watson has to use reasoning to overcome his human opponents. Technology amplifying our cognitive abilities, so we can imagine and design things that were simply out of our reach as plain old un-augmented humans.

Making of Artificial Intelligence

I think the era of human augmentation is as much about the physical world as it is about the virtual, intellectual realm. How will technology augment us? In the physical world, robotic systems. 

There certainly is a fear that robots are going to take jobs away from humans, and that is true in certain sectors. But I'm much more interested in this idea that humans and robots are going to augment each other, and start to inhabit a new space. 

Our nervous system, the human nervous system, tells us everything that's going on around us. But the nervous system of the things we make is rudimentary at best. For instance, a car doesn't tell the city's public work department that it just a pothole at one of the road. A building doesn't tell its designers whether or not the people inside like being there.

If the designers had known what was really happening in the real world with their designs( the road, the building) they could have used that knowledge to create an experience that was better for the user.

What's missing is the nervous system connecting us to all that we design, make and use. What if all of you had that kind of information flowing to you from the things you create in the real world? With all the stuff we make, we spend tremendous amount of money and energy in convincing people to buy the things we have made. 

But if had this connection to the things that you design and create after they are out in the real world, after they have been sold or launched, we could actually change that, and go for making people want our stuff.