Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t the future. It’s here now. And it’s driving us more and more to reimagine how we engage with ourselves and the world. The virtual assistants in our smartphones, the GPS systems in our cars, and facial recognition software in our laptops—all are instances of AI advancements quietly impacting our daily lives. It seems that every day something new in AI is being announced.
Artificial intelligence, in fact, touches nearly every phase of how we learn, work, and play. And it’s influencing our everyday lives profoundly, providing clear benefits that far outweigh the risks involved. It increases efficiency and productivity, enhances decision-making, improves healthcare, boosts safety, and amplifies personalized experiences to name just a few of the benefits AI provides.
AI will continue to make things easier, more efficient, and more accurate for us for years to come. In fact, it will be almost impossible not to engage with AI on some level in the future. But staying abreast of this continually evolving technology challenges even the most dedicated technophile. The article below provides a glimpse of our potential future with AI.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence refers to the ability of machines to perform tasks we typically associate with humans, such as learning and problem-solving. AI features a wide variety of techniques for solving a broad range of problems—from education and game-playing to medical diagnosis and language translation.
AI can, for example, analyze large volumes of data quickly, providing valuable insights for decision-making. It can also automate repetitive tasks, answer questions 24/7, operate continuously, perform tasks with high precision, and make recommendations based on personal preferences and behavior.
But the phrase artificial intelligence is an umbrella term for any computer system, software, or theory that allows a machine to execute a task that usually requires human intelligence.
The two most popular approaches to AI are Generative AI and Adaptive AI. Generative AI is an approach to AI that strives to create new content using text, music, video, audio, code, and images.
ChatGPT, for instance, is a generative AI model. It uses existing data to produce new data with basically the same characteristics. ChatGPT produces text, translates languages, writes different kinds of creative content, and answers questions in an informative way. It also uses natural language processing to answer prompts from individuals.
Adaptive AI is an approach that learns and adapts to new data and changes in its environment. It’s more flexible and resilient than Generative AI, in which alterations in data or the environment can easily disrupt. Adaptive AI models are often built using machine learning techniques, enabling systems to learn new things without being explicitly programmed. It then uses this new data to produce predictions, make decisions, or take actions.
Adaptive AI is powerful and versatile. It has the potential to transform industries, including manufacturing, retail, healthcare, finance, and transportation. The technology includes continual and reactive learning models, self-improving models, adaptive control models, and Bayesian models. Smart email systems and smart keyboard apps use Adaptive AI to do their jobs. Given Adaptive AI’s potential, it is no surprise that Gartner labeled it one of its top 10 strategic technologies for 2023.
Generative AI versus Adaptive AI
Focus is the key difference between the two AI types. Adaptive AI focuses on learning and adapting to changes in its environment. It’s the approach of choice in applications where the environment and/or data constantly change, such as in self-driving cars, where the vehicle must navigate constantly changing obstacles. It’s also the approach of choice for many healthcare applications, such as diagnosing diseases or developing individual treatment plans and complex situations requiring large amounts of data.
Generative AI is the approach of choice for situations where new content is required, including creating images, music, and text. Generative AI models are simpler and easier to design than Adaptive models and often use unsupervised and semi-supervised algorithms. Generative AI is also ideal for applications where less complex data sets are the norm, or you need to generate synthetic data. Since this approach lacks the ability to learn and adapt to changing environments, it’s prone to errors and mistakes.
Both Adaptive AI and Generative AI are growing fields. Both are already impacting our lives
significantly. And both have the potential to become even more powerful and versatile than they are now. But Adaptive AI models are more flexible and resilient than Generative AI models. Adaptive AI has the power to revolutionize many industries, so you can expect to see more innovative and ground-breaking uses of it in the future.
Below are some real-world examples of potential AI applications that could impact how we live, work, and play in the future:
Healthcare:
As we peer into the future of AI and its transformative potential, one area where its impact is already profoundly felt is in the realm of healthcare and specifically, biopharmaceutical manufacturing. The convergence of AI and biopharmaceuticals is revolutionizing drug discovery and development.
AI algorithms can sift through vast datasets of genetic information, clinical trials, and research papers to identify potential drug candidates with unprecedented speed and precision. This not only expedites the development of new treatments but also holds the promise of personalized medicine, where therapies are tailored to an individual’s genetic makeup.
With AI’s ability to predict disease outbreaks, optimize clinical trials, and improve drug manufacturing processes, the biopharmaceutical landscape is poised for remarkable advancements that will undoubtedly shape the future of healthcare.
Education:
AI has the potential to transform education. It can improve accessibility, reduce bias, improve data analysis, and boost motivation and engagement. Some future applications of AI in education include:
- Automating administrative tasks, like facilitating issue feedback, arranging and facilitating parent/guardian reactions, and automating messaging to students.
- Creating smart content like digitizing video lectures, conferences, and textbook guidelines and personalizing lesson plans for students
- Enriching learning experience by generating and providing audio and video summaries and integral lesson plans
- Boosting learning by providing students with access to extra learning material or help through voice assistants
- Using hyper-personalization AI techniques so that a teacher can better monitor students’ data thoroughly and create lesson plans, reminders, study guides, and flash notes
These are just some examples of AI in education. The biggest benefit of AI in education is that it gives teachers more time to devote to students.
Lifestyle
AI’s impact on our lives is already significant. It will expand. Many of us, for example, use voice assistants like Google and Alexa to control smart home devices. Some instances of AI applications in this area include:
- Providing personalized recommendations in our daily lives, like e-commerce, entertainment websites, social media, and video-sharing platforms, like YouTube.
- Supporting facial recognition techniques on computers and smartphones using face filters to detect and identify people and issues in order to provide secure access.
- Controlling smart home activities remotely by powering sensors and actuators that automate tasks, such as turning on lights or adjusting thermostats.
- Spearheading the development of new diagnostic tools and treatments for diseases or identifying patterns and trends by analyzing medical data.
One area where AI has already made a significant mark is filtering spam from our email caches and sending them to trash folders, saving people time and money.
Business & E-commerce
AI is transforming how companies do business. Many already use chatbots to automate customer service tasks like answering customer questions, providing technical support, and resolving product issues. That frees employees to attend to other, more critical tasks. Some future uses of AI in business and e-commerce are:
- Analyzing customer data and developing personalized recommendations for products, services, and content to customers.
- Reviewing data such as purchase patterns, payment methods, and shipping addresses to identify suspicious activities
- Optimizing pricing for products and services by scrutinizing historical data, competitor prices, and market conditions to determine the optimal price for each product
- Identifying objects and faces in images to be used for product tagging, fraud detection, and facial recognition
- Augmenting reality experiences to help customers visualize products, learn about them, and interact with them in a more immersive way
The use of AI in business is in the relatively early stages. It’s expected to grow, but first, it needs to overcome challenges like data requirements and acquisition, technical expertise, bias, and security concerns.
Gaming
Game developers use AI to create intelligent, human-like non-player characters (NPC), predict human behavior using game design, and improve game testing. Alien Isolation, a survival horror game published by Creative Assembly in 2014, uses AI to stalk players throughout the game. Additional examples of AI in gaming are:
- Employing AI-powered NPCs to exhibit lifelike behavior in an avatar, adapt to player actions, and provide more immersive interactions
- Using AI to dynamically adjust the difficulty of a game based on the player’s skill level, ensuring that the game constantly challenges and engages players
- Generate procedural content, such as levels, enemies, and items, to help create games that are more challenging and unpredictable
- Personalize the gaming experience for each player by tailoring the difficulty, content, and challenges to the player’s individual preferences
- Creating truly intelligent NPCs that learn and adapt to player behavior and generating games that can produce content indistinguishable from human-made content
Some additional applications of AI in gaming include personalizing the gaming experience to the individual player’s preferences subconsciously and creating games that can help players learn and develop new skills.
The Future of AI is Bright
The future of AI is bright. It will continue to grow and expand going forward. Additional areas where AI will impact our daily lives include Industrial manufacturing, navigation, robotics, and human resources, as well as agriculture, manufacturing, marketing, finance, astronomy, travel, and logistics. AI will also continue to impact social media and cybersecurity, where it can identify unknown threats, detect firewall flaws, and respond to threats. The ways AI will impact us in the future is almost endless.
But AI isn’t without its challenges. It will have to overcome bias, privacy concerns, safety considerations, ethical dilemmas, & security risks. Plus, it will have to overcome technical challenges like the need for more data & more powerful hardware, & the need for better algorithms to make more accurate and reliable predictions. These challenges are formidable. But AI is still in its early stages. With maturity it will overcome these challenges and continue to provide benefits that far outweigh its risks.
- The global AI market current value is around 200 billion US dollars.
- Consumers express concern about businesses using AI, especially regarding product descriptions (70%) and reviews (60%).
- A considerable 77% of individuals have voiced their concerns regarding AI potentially leading to job displacement.
