AI Is Everywhere — Should We Be Excited or Concerned?

Wherever you turn, artificial intelligence is showing up in new technology products and services across almost all industries.

Here are a few examples of news headlines from just one day last week:

Bloomberg: “Google Adds a Suite of New AI Tech for Photos and More”

“Google’s annual I/O conference kicked off on Tuesday and the company showed off all the ways it’s using artificial intelligence to make our family memories more vivid, to make smartphone cameras less racist, and potentially to even save lives.”

BBC: “The Navy sub commanded by artificial intelligence”
“MSubs of Plymouth, a specialist in autonomous underwater vehicles, won a £2.5m Ministry of Defence contract to build and test an Extra-Large Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (XLUUV) that should be able to operate up to 3,000 miles from home for three months.

“The big innovation here is the autonomy. The submarine’s movements and actions will be governed entirely by Artificial Intelligence (AI).”

ZDNet: “AI and data science jobs are hot. Here’s what employers want”

“Up to 10,000 jobs in AI and data science open each month, and the trend is only growing — but candidates often lack the right skills.”

Wired: “These Ex-Journalists Are Using AI to Catch Online Defamation”
“CaliberAI wants to help overstretched newsrooms with a tool that’s like spell-check for libel. But its potential uses go far beyond traditional media.”

Reuters: “Is that Tom Hanks speaking in Japanese? No, it’s just AI”
“Bad lip-syncing in dubbing and subtitles can put off audiences and hurt box office takings of foreign films.

“AI may be about to change all that.

“Start-up Flawless AI, co-founded by film director Scott Mann, has a tool that it says can accurately recreate lip sync in dubbing without altering the performance of the actors.”

And the list of AI examples goes on. This video from Simplilearn looks at the top AI technologies this year:

AI TRENDS

At the end of last year, Daniel Newman offered these “4 AI Trends Set To Accelerate In 2021” in Forbes:

• The growth of robotic process automation and AI-driven automation
• A consistent and accelerated shift toward cybersecurity and AIOps
• Confluence with the Internet of Things
• Personalized AI for marketing

ChiefExecutive claims that organizations can break down bias and mitigate the pitfalls of AI in tech hiring: “We often hear that when it comes to DEI ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant,’ but layering AI on top of today’s resume screens will not only exacerbate the pedigree bias problem, but it will also create a black box around the vetting process by obfuscating the bias. The algorithm will continue selecting candidates based on pedigree proxies — i e., candidates who may have attended a top university or have experience at a Big-5 tech company. This artificially shrinks your candidate choices and pipeline diversity. …

“The key to implementing digital transformation in hiring is to strike the right balance of human and technology. Use technology to lighten the cognitive load of your interviewers by suggestion questions based on the role and competencies being evaluated. Use video recordings to review your interviewers and train them to spot mistakes like ambiguity or preferential treatment.

“Successfully implementing A.I. in recruiting and hiring is going to take an investment. Not just an investment in technology, but an investment in creating more inclusive data science teams. This step is critical to ensure we’re not codifying today’s biases in the next generation of tech.”

On the scary side of AI, when looking long-term, these articles from Futurism and The Guardian describe a fascinating interview with Nobel prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman, in…