Just in case the whole AI hype train has passed you by, we’re delighted to report that you’ve probably only missed the boring bits.
As someone said recently, we’re mostly at the AOL stage of AI right now, with all the real heavyweight tech still barrelling down the pipe to our homes and devices.
Truth is, for every doomster or negative Nora claiming that artificial intelligence is nothing but smoke and mirrors, there’s a bunch of people quietly making it do useful and sometimes amazing work.
For example, Quantum Street, an AI investment tool running on the IBM Watson platform, currently manages over $5 billion of financial assets. It does this by using deep learning to measure daily media signals, assess risk and automate portfolio processes at ridiculous speeds.
At the other end of the scale there are millions of individual programmers, marketers and business executives across the globe running modest AI routines to make their lives and daily work easier and more cost effective.
Setting up for the future
So with all that being said, what does this mean for the future of AI integration into our lives? Ericsson’s ConsumerLab recently polled more than 6500 early adopters in 13 cities around the world, for it’s Hot Consumer Trends 2030s report.
The respondents said they thought over 80% of consumers will be using AI for lifestyle or life-altering decisions by 2030.
There’s no question the rabbit’s out of the hat, and we’re clearly on the cusp of a massive societal change. But for those who may still be doubters, here’s our top five picks for how AI may impact our lives over the next few years.
1. Global travel
Automation, intelligent or not, has already made a difference to our lives. We don’t pay parking attendants any more, we shove a credit card into a slot and we’re done.
Now imagine services like this, but with intelligent reasoning behind them. For example, an automated system which can book, manage and support your vacations from soup to nuts.
‘Hey AI, we’re feeling like a break in Cancun in May. Sort it out please.’ The system will search, not just your bank balance, but calendar and school holidays, and do a preliminary booking of flights, rentals, visas, hotels, site-seeing – according to your likes of course – and even local restaurants. All you have to do is turn up at the airport.
Repeat that experience across every boring task you have to do.
2. Retail therapy
Fed up with the hassle of shopping and fashion? Why not let AI take the strain, and help make things easier. Your personal shopping assistant will stay abreast of fashion changes, and make suggestions in your calendar. Yes or no. Your choice.
The assistant will know your style tastes, sizes and even color preferences. But most importantly, they’ll know what’s hot on the wires.
3. Netbytes & Chill
Why wait until the networks decide to deliver a new series of your favorite show, when you can create it yourself using your Home AI? Dial up the genre, choice of licensed actors, type and length of show, and sit back while your AI concierge serves the popcorn. Binging never sounded so good.
Ashton Kutcher, actor and director sums it up perfectly when talking about how he's been playing with the unreleased text to video tool, Sora.
"I didn’t have to hire a CGI Department to do it. In five minutes I rendered a video of an ultra marathoner running across the desert being chased by a sandstorm, and it looks exactly like that. So fast forward and let’s go 30 times more performant. You'll be able to render a whole movie."
4. AI Poppins
The idea of a family nanny is so old fashioned. Until it’s not. With the kind of AI arriving in a few years, there’s no doubt that some sort of friendly humanoid AI will soon be an essential part of any family grouping. Childcare, pet care, granny care will all be taken care of, along with some hefty insurance premiums of course. Just in case.
5. AI Job Mates
Of all the possible AI futures we face, the one which is most obvious is that of a workplace where humans sit alongside machines. How that will turn out exactly, nobody knows. We’ve already seen robots in factories, where fairly dumb machines build cars and move stuff around, but now it looks like the office will be the new frontier.
AI is already being used to write resumes and job applications, and on the flip side being used to screen job applicants. It’s not going to be long before AI powered tools conduct the whole job matching cycle for us.
Our job hunter AI will scout out new opportunities, tailor our resumes to match openings, send in the application and even conduct the initial online interviews. The employer’s AI will do the screening and first interview, and only when down to the final shortlist will humans become involved.
If that’s a nightmare scenario for you, you’re not alone. But inevitably, as we come to rely more and more on AI automation, this is probably how it’s going to be.
Welcome to our brave new world.
