As far as buzzwords or phrases go, you couldn’t get buzzier than Artificial Intelligence or AI at the moment. Its almost impossible to read any news these days without another article about how AI is going to change the world. Even worse is if you happen to work in the tech industry. You will see AI attached to almost every piece of software and solution that is coming to market in the next few years.
From all of this you would think that AI is a new thing, but it is not. The modern field of AI began in the mid-20th century. In 1956, the Dartmouth Conference marked the birth of AI as a field, with pioneers like John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert Simon laying its foundations. Early AI focused on symbolic reasoning and problem-solving. As computational power grew, so did AI's capabilities. However, the realities quickly set in and interest in AI dropped. Termed AI winters, referring to how all investment and research froze, the first AI winter descended in the 1970s and 1980s.
Marked by dwindling interest and funding in artificial intelligence research. High expectations collided with limited technological capabilities, leading to unmet promises and disillusionment. The initial enthusiasm for AI waned as progress stalled, with early successes overshadowed by the complexity of real-world problems. Funding cuts followed, dampening research and forcing many AI projects to halt. Criticisms of overhyped claims further exacerbated the downturn.
However, the AI winter also spurred reflection and refinement, laying the groundwork for future breakthroughs. It highlighted the need for realistic expectations and paved the way for AI's resurgence. Enabling the future branching into areas like machine learning and neural networks. Breakthroughs in algorithms, coupled with abundant data, propelled AI to revolutionize industries, from healthcare to finance, shaping our digital landscape profoundly.
Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash
The public viewpoint on AI is very mixed, many are very nervous about what it means for us, as humans. Whilst others are very excited about how it could improve our lives. In recent years, certainly in the arts and entertainment industry, AI is seen as a pariah and the end of days in terms of jobs career opportunities. With the rise of LLMs (Large Language Models) and generative AI tools making it easier to produce images with simple text inputs. Or the ability to create large volumes of text using just simple by asking questions.
The reality is though that AI has been taking jobs for years. It’s just that many don’t see it unless it immediately affects them. For example, the rise of chat bots as a means of customer service have been around for years. Banking has mostly moved online and most of us don’t even go into banks anymore. Also, ask yourself when the last time you went into a travel agent to book a holiday or a flight was. All of these are examples of where AI has helped make our lives easier and taken jobs away. Also, If you shop on Amazon, you are using AI and helping to impact the availability of jobs on the high street.
In 2017 Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance replaced all of its staff with IBM Watson Explorer to make a saving of $1million a year - The Guardian
I partly blame Hollywood and the movie industry for these misconceptions. Since the early days of science fiction, movies have aligned AI and robotics hand in hand, like one couldn’t exist without the other. This has meant that most people have been expecting an obvious arrival of AI. Almost like it would walk down the street and wave at you in its robotic form. This robotic view of AI also leads to people thinking that AI would come along and take the manual jobs and the jobs that no one wants to do first.
I Robot - 20th Century Fox
The problem here is that even though Robotics relies on AI, AI does not need robotics. In fact, robotics is still a few years away from being able to replicate the dexterity and movement that us humans have. For example, if you have a glass of water next to you, picking it up is easy right? But just think of all the minute calculations your brain has made just to control your arm and hand to pick it up. Raising the glass to your mouth to take a drink introduces thousands of new variables that need to be accounted for and calculated. Robotics is long way from getting all these things right for a simple task. This is why AI has snuck in and is taking the jobs we expected to be last.
Search engines harness AI to deliver efficient and relevant results to users. AI algorithms analyse vast amounts of data, considering factors like relevance, user behaviour, and context to rank search results accurately.
Is AI going to take more jobs? Most probably. The genie is very much out of the bottle now and the march of change is happening. The real question is how quickly will this happen. Society has gone through many shifts, but these have historically taken good periods of time. Even with the advent of the internet, the digital transformation of society has taken nearly 30 years. In this time, we have seen shifts in work forces and changes in how we work. Some of the shifts I have even mentioned above.
When change takes time, it allows for different jobs to be born, new opportunities to be created that didn’t even exist before. The fear with AI is that if it moves too quickly and change happens too fast, there will be more people out of work than new jobs being created. So how quickly will AI consume jobs, no one really knows, and different analysts will have different points of views. The real deciding factor is if it can deliver on its promises, and even more importantly (from a business perspective), if it can bring a good monetary return for investors.
Photo by Wave Break Media Micro from Adobe Stock
At the moment AI has huge hype and unicorn start-ups are being born almost every day, but we have been here before, anyone remember the Metaverse? AI has been here before too. Much like previous AI winters, another could happen if the returns are not great enough and right now AI is very expensive and power hungry to run.
AI powers features like voice search and autocomplete, improving user experience and accessibility.
The truth is, I don’t know what is going to happen, but I suppose the point that I am trying to make is that AI has been around for a long time, since before the public internet was even available. Technology has moved on, and jobs have changed over the last few decades, and they will continue to. The doom and gloom around the job market and AI may not come to pass, we may just transition into a new era of new jobs. With the advancement of AI actually improving our lives and actually making things easier.
In my next blog I am going to bring the conversation back round to AI and art and my thoughts around this.
Cover photo by Eric Krull on Unsplash