Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a sci-fi concept in a distant future. It’s real, it’s here and it’s already impacting your life. It’s in your phone, it’s living on the internet. AI is shaping how you interact with the world and how the world interacts with you.
As with any grand new tech discovery, there are going to be changes to how you live and work, with some experts predicting that half of all jobs will disappear in a decade. Here's a list of some that may already be going.
Personal assistants
Very few of us are lucky to have an assistant, but AI gives you the chance to have one in your hand. An AI system learns what you do and when you do them. It can optimise your apps, read your email and messages and automatically make appointments.
When you combine this with a voice service, suddenly you have a real assistant who can shop for you, do tasks, and even do things around the house (if you have devices connected to your internet). Turning lights on, making coffee, finding objects you’ve lost, sending messages, all while keeping your butt on the couch.
Photographers
AI in phones is most easily seen in the camera. The Huawei Mate 10 is the best example of this. Its AI has been fed 100 million images to learn from and the camera can recognise 13 difference objects and scenes. From portraits to pets to food to text; the phone knows what you’re shooting and can change the automatic settings appropriately.
It works fast. Point your camera at a flower and the flower icon pops up. Take a shot in low light and the night shot icon appears. It can even tell the difference between a cat and a dog.
New improvements are coming that will analyse a scene and then suggest better composition. Combine that with the improvements in camera quality and you begin to wonder if pro photographers will disappear.
Security guards
Not only can AI learn individual faces, it can make excellent guesses about a person's age, race, and even emotion. With enough cameras in a building, you can track an individual and figure out if they are up to something.
Combine this with physical robots and you’ve got a security team. Robot security guards already exist in some malls, though right now they're basic and the AI they use analyses groups of kids who might tip them over, rather than criminals.
Even still, you may see fewer guards wandering around our malls, thwarting shoplifters.
Bank clerks
First the ATM, then the banking smartphone apps and now it is very likely that many of the remaining human-based teller and representative banking jobs will be finished off by AI. Better start looking for a new role.
Insurance underwriters
In Japan, an insurance firm has replaced many of its staff with an AI system which can apparently “analyze and interpret all of our data, including unstructured text, images, audio, and video” better and faster than a human can. The end could be nigh for those in insurance.
Manufacturing and Construction workers
You know the robots are coming but it could happen sooner than you think. While you might keep your job if you're a factory supervisor or a foreman, within a decade most jobs in manufacturing and construction will be filled by AI controlled machines.
Farmers
Artificially intelligent machines can do most things already from milking cows to pulling lettuce and it won't be long until every process is automated. Farm owners might be safe, farm hands won't be.
Journalists
There are already bots that can write articles that can fool you into thinking a human wrote them. These aren’t long-form investigative articles, more short stories about easily analysed subjects, usually sports.
AI learns from large amounts of data and humans have digitised nearly everything we’ve written over the last few centuries. From that it can determine what regular human language looks like and using reading patterns can determine popular article types and how to capture attention in each paragraph.
It’ll be a while before these article fool everyone. They tend to be poorly written and repetitive. These aren't long-form investigative articles, more short stories about easily analysed subjects, usually sports but it won’t be long before AI is winning Pulitzers.
This article has been created for Huawei to raise awareness of the awesome AI capabilities of its intelligent phone, the Mate 10.
