By Scott Klososky, Founding Partner at Future Point of View

After a year of being pummeled with information about AI being the next big thing and possibly the most impactful technology ever, it is time to step back and really form a worldview on the potential impacts on humanity.  We have a few years of data points to extrapolate a future view that is reasonably accurate. It is important to turn our high beams on because AI really will alter the course of humanity and the more we see how the better we will be able to amplify the good and minimize the danger.

Let’s set aside the much talked about the future view of machines taking over the world and look a little shorter term, say the next ten to fifteen years.  Any further and we would be treading into the world of unknown inventions that tend to dramatically change outcomes we cannot imagine seeing today.  With this in mind, let’s start with the most talked-about impact of AI – the displacement of tasks and jobs.

Depending on who’s doing the statistics and the time frame involved, the displacement number is predicted to be anywhere from 20% to 50% of all jobs. The prevailing wisdom is AI will be a boon to productivity and the economy, but terrible for many workers who get left out in the cold.  I agree on the economy and completely disagree with the people-impact.  

AI will blossom in three areas, tasks that are highly repetitive, very complicated or dangerous for humans.  Replacing highly repetitive jobs frees workers from mind-numbingly boring tasks.  Replacing highly complicated decision making frees humans from struggling with complexity levels that cause stress and failure.  Replacing dangerous work is a safety improvement that will save injuries and lives.  More specifically, AI will give us the following benefits and looking at both sides of the coin, a couple of new risks.

Improved Convenience: When Google Maps tells us without asking how long it will take and possible routes to our next destination, we are seeing the front end of hundreds of AI-based services that will help us in our lives.  The recommendation engines behind Google, Amazon, and Netflix show how an AI helps by making suggestions.  Smart hubs like the Amazon Echo learn about us daily and seek to make our lives easier. Play this out for another decade and the many forms of AI help will be astounding.

Improved Healthcare: We are quickly improving wearable sensors so the data from our bodies will usher in the quantified self era.  As we harvest real-time data on how our bodies are performing, AI’s will crunch years of past and present data to advise us on everything from what to eat to the exact exercise needed to maximize our health.

Improved Safety and Security:  AI’s are being used to help defend against online fraud and cybersecurity attacks and will soon move more personal with tools that understand how we live, where we are, and what dangers could exist.  We will have a digital guardian angel on our person that is driven by a collection of AI’s designed to keep us safe.  

Improved Decision Making: Decision Support System (DSS), a form of AI, will help us make decisions on complicated topics.  The AI will do the heavy lifting of crunching large amounts of data on our behalf and will use algorithms to consider aspects of a decision we might never see.  It is possible that DSS’s will be the most popular types of AI because they will be integrated in millions of applications to guide wise decisions.  They will help us decide what to eat, what car and home to buy, what job to go after and how to raise our children.  It will become normal for us to rely on our DSS’s like we would a human mentor or teacher.

Collateral Damage from Autonomous Machines: We are quickly developing more than just autonomous cars and trucks.  We have vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers, and autonomous lawn sprinklers.  We crave autonomous machines that will do work on our behalf because anything a machine can do, we are liberated!  Although this will be a wonderful aspect of robotics combined with AI, it will also cause collateral damage as we improve autonomous capabilities by learning from our mistakes. People will die and get hurt and we need to understand this is a price we pay to refine these capabilities. The good news is for every person who is killed by an autonomous car or truck, there will be thousands saved because a human is not behind the wheel.

People Becoming Dependent on AI’s:  One of the most dangerous human aspects of AI is the loss of capabilities when we hand over 50% of everything to machines. The more we let an AI make lending decisions, the fewer humans have this skill.  The more we make 50% of our decisions with the support of an AI, the less we can make good decisions on our own.  This means we will become addicted and dependent on AI to help us survive and prosper.

This is a small set of impacts and meant only to point out healthy and risky aspects of AI integrating with humanity.  The important take away needs to be that on the whole, AI will help the world more than harm it.  We need to be aware of the risks and at the same time, move quickly to use AI to improve humanity.