New Report Explores Myriad Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Shape Our Future

AUSTIN, TX -- There's an unforgettable scene in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey when Hal 9000, the spaceship's computer, decides to take control of the mission. Returning from a space walk, the astronaut repeatedly orders the computer to open the ship's pod bay doors for re-entry.

"I'm sorry, Dave," Hal finally responds in skin-crawlingly-creepy monotone after remaining silent despite numerous requests for the doors' opening. "I'm afraid I can't do that." It's the haunting stuff of nightmares, indelibly etched in one's memory for decades well into adulthood that might, or might not, even prompt one to look at the microwave oven askance (even while knowing it's not AI, but still).

Yet artificial intelligence is not a malevolent force, but an advance designed to help us with our daily lives. Or so says a panel of academic and industrial thinkers who've compiled a report designed to highlight future AI contributions, specifically across the 2030 landscape.

Titled “Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030,” the year-long investigation is the first product of the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100), an ongoing project hosted by Stanford University "...to inform societal deliberation and provide guidance on the ethical development of smart software, sensors and machines."

The report has a key Texas connection in the form of Peter Stone, a computer scientist at The University of Texas at Austin who is chair of the 17-member panel of international experts.

“We believe specialized AI applications will become both increasingly common and more useful by 2030, improving our economy and quality of life,” Stone said in a prepared statement. “But this technology will also create profound challenges, affecting jobs and incomes and other issues that we should begin addressing now to ensure that the benefits of AI are broadly shared.”

The panel has looked ahead to the year 2030 in order to forecast how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) might affect life in a typical North American city – in areas diverse as transportation, healthcare and education ­– and spur discussion of how to ensure the safe, fair and beneficial development of these rapidly emerging technologies, university officials said.

The report's genesis is rooted from an earlier 2009 study that galvanized AI scientists in a process of collective introspection, university officials said. The project was advanced when Eric and Mary Horvitz created the AI100 endowment through Stanford’s School of Engineering, officials noted.

AI100 then formed a standing committee of scientists, tasking them with commissioning reports on different aspects of AI over the ensuing century.

“This process will be a marathon, not a sprint, but today we’ve made a good start,” said Russ Altman, a professor of bioengineering and the Stanford faculty director of AI100. "Stanford is excited to host this process of introspection. This work makes practical contribution to the public debate on the roles and implications of artificial intelligence.”
The AI100 standing committee first met in 2015, led by chairwoman and Harvard University computer scientist Barbara Grosz, according to university officials. It aim was to convene a panel of scientists with diverse professional and personal backgrounds, and enlist their expertise to assess the technological, economic and policy implications of potential AI applications in a societally relevant setting, officials explained.
“AI technologies can be reliable and broadly beneficial,” Grosz said. “Being transparent about their design and deployment challenges will build trust and avert unjustified fear and suspicion.”

In the report, eight different areas of human activity are highlighted in which AI technologies have already made an impact, an effect that will become more pervasive and profound by 2030, officials said. This is heady stuff, the report being a 28,000-word volume that includes a glossary.

Covered therein are AI applications (such as computer vision) that might one day help screen tissue samples for cancers, or how natural language processing will allow computerized systems to grasp not just the literal definitions, but the connotations and intent behind words, officials said.

Five of the report's eight sections focus on broad topics (such as transportation) "...where there is already buzz about self-driving cars," authors write with near-palpable giddiness. Three other sections touch on technological impacts -- such as the section on employment and workplace trends -- that deal with the likelihood of rapid changes in jobs and incomes.

“It is not too soon for social debate on how the fruits of an AI-dominated economy should be shared,” researchers write in the report, noting also the need for public discourse. “Currently in the United States, at least sixteen separate agencies govern sectors of the economy related to AI technologies.

Among the questions addressed in the report: “Who is responsible when a self- driven car crashes or an intelligent medical device fails? How can AI applications be prevented from racial discrimination or financial cheating?”

The eight sections discuss the following areas, with descriptions of each category taken verbatim from the report summary:

• Transportation: Autonomous cars, trucks and, possibly, aerial delivery vehicles may alter how we commute, work and shop and create new patterns of life and leisure in cities.
• Home/Service Robots: Like the robotic vacuum cleaners already in some homes, specialized robots will clean and provide security in live/work spaces that will be equipped with sensors and remote controls.
• Health Care: Devices to monitor personal health and robot-assisted surgery are hints of things to come if AI is developed in ways that gain the trust of doctors, nurses, patients and regulators.
• Education: Interactive tutoring systems already help students learn languages, math and other skills, and more is possible if technologies such as neuro-linguistic programming develop to augment instruction by humans.
• Entertainment: The conjunction of content creation tools, social networks and AI will lead to new ways to gather, organize and deliver media in engaging, personalized and interactive ways.
• Low-resource Communities: Investments in uplifting technologies such as predictive models to prevent lead poisoning or improve food distributions could spread AI benefits to the underserved.
• Public Safety and Security: Cameras, drones and software to analyze crime patterns should use AI in ways that reduce human bias and enhance safety without loss of liberty or dignity.
• Employment and Workplace: Work should start now on how to help people adapt as the economy undergoes rapid changes as many existing jobs are lost and new ones are created.

“Until now most of what is known about AI comes from science fiction books and movies,” Stone said. “This study provides a realistic foundation to discuss how AI technologies are likely to affect society.”

Unless, of course, you need Hal to open the pod bay doors. If you deal with Hal, you're on your own.

>>> Public domain image via WikiMedia Commons