Inside AI
The Wild West Gold Rush of AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is re-shaping the world we live in. There is no lack of hype to fuel the enthusiasm, and to be fair, the promise is inviting.
We are told that AI holds promise for humanity in general. We will be able to better diagnose, cure and even predict illnesses. We will be able to produce and distribute enough resources to feed a fast-growing population. We will be able to improve living conditions in our cities, and even mitigate the effects of climate change.
It also holds promise for businesses. It will help them to radically reduce costs and improve operational efficiency with automatic decision-making in a variety of domains such as supply chain optimization, demand forecasting, predictive maintenance, fraud avoidance, risk reduction, cybersecurity, and robotics. A world of new opportunities will open up, and businesses will reinvent customer engagement with new levels of personalization, natural language processing and behaviour analysis.
This great potential has led to something that looks like the Wild West Gold Rush in the 19th century. Organizations are rushing to explore the realm of possibilities and to deploy AI capabilities with little consideration for the broader implications. But before we all dive in head-first, I think there are big questions to consider about privacy, fairness, explainability, accountability and generally about the ethical use of AI .
I already discussed the tension between data-driven innovation and privacy in a previous article. In my next three blogs, I will cover the issues of algorithmic bias and explainability, and how they relate to our ability to innovate and realize value with AI. It is exciting to be there at the emergence of a new science, and to see how ethics is becoming the new frontier of technology.
Stay tuned for my next three blogs:
- Algorithms, the Illusion of Neutrality
- X-AI, Crystal Balls and Black Boxes
- Ethics, the new Frontier of Technology
And join the #Road2AI roadshow for more!
