LyRise Series: Can artificial intelligence take over the world?

There's a lot of hype about artificial intelligence (AI) taking over the world. But we don't think it has any chance of doing so. The data doesn't back it up and neither do the people.

The data is there

The first step to creating an AI is to gather the data you want it to learn from. This can be a lot of information, especially when you look at all the possibilities: You could teach your AI how many people like dogs by feeding it data on the number of times someone searched for “dog” or clicked through a Google ad that said “dogs are man's best friend.” Or you could take a more direct approach and just tell your AI about how many people like dogs, with no explanation of why this is true.

Luckily for us, there's lots of data available! It might seem like most people don't like dogs—but if we look into this more closely, we'll find that many of those who don't have actually been bitten by one before and don't feel comfortable around them anymore because they're worried about getting bitten again someday soon (or at least until they get their rabies shots). So instead of just assuming everyone dislikes our favorite house pets based solely on statistics alone (which would be incorrect), let's consider other variables as well: age groups within countries where dog ownership rates differ significantly compared with other areas around them; how long individuals have had their own furry companions before adopting another animal type later in life; even whether certain types are considered "good luck" symbols or not; etcetera...

AI isn't good at everything

It's good at specific tasks like image recognition and speech recognition. But it's not good at other things, like driving a car. As with any tool, AI is a means to an end—you still need humans to decide why you want the information in the first place and how you're going to use it. AI is not going to take over the world (though some might hope for that). It's a tool—and one that we should be very careful with.

What can it do?

What can it do?

AI is pretty good at automating tasks that humans have traditionally done. It's bad at everything else. But hey, we've got plenty of time to figure out what those other things are!

How many AI nerds are there?

If you think about it, it makes sense that there are a lot of people talking about artificial intelligence and not a lot of people working on it. There are more than 5 million software developers in the world, but only around 1% are working on artificial intelligence. If you're an AI nerd (that's what we call ourselves), you know that most of your colleagues have no idea what you do or even what machine learning is. They may ask if you work with robots, or they might think you make websites that are able to talk back to users—but beyond those misconceptions, they don't really know anything else about the field of computer science. You may be reading this article because someone forwarded it to you via email—or maybe you were searching for something else entirely when this article popped up in your search results because someone used its title as click bait (don't worry; everyone does this).

Where's the money?

The first thing to know about AI is that the artificial intelligence industry is a big business. In fact, according to research firm Statista, it's expected to grow from $130 billion in 2018 to $1.1 trillion by 2025—a compound annual growth rate of 10.3 percent over that six-year period.

This means there’s a lot of money being thrown around by companies who want their piece of the cake—and because many large corporations are investing in AI technologies as part of their business strategies (or at least considering it), this amount isn't likely to decrease anytime soon.

But despite all those billions being thrown around, not all companies are reaping huge profits from their efforts in advancing our understanding of these technologies or building tools based on them—and for those who do reap massive profits? Well...they're still not making as much money as you might think they would be given how hot a commodity AI has become lately!

Will it take over the world?

You know what's not going to come back from the dead and wipe us out? AI. It's just a tool, and tools can be used for good or evil. Right now, most people working on AI are using it for good things, like helping doctors diagnose diseases more quickly or giving us better search results.

AI won't take over the world anytime soon because there is no one single definition of what an "artificial intelligence" is—we all have different interpretations of what that means, which means we'll never agree on whether or not something qualifies as one until someone invents one that does something truly dangerous (like start wars).

There's a lot of hype, but the data and the people don't really match up.

You may have heard that artificial intelligence is taking over the world.

But what does that mean, really? And can we really expect a rogue army of sentient robots to rise up any time soon? Let's take a look at what AI actually is, and whether or not it poses a threat to human society.

First off: you should know that "artificial intelligence" is an umbrella term for many different technologies that can be used to solve specific problems. There are some things computers are in fact better at than humans — such as recognizing patterns in large data sets — but there are also plenty of cases where we're still superior (like driving cars). The media likes to give the impression that machines will one day achieve sentience and take over everything; this seems unlikely because there's no clear way for them to do so. As long as humans remain capable of making decisions based on intuition and creativity rather than facts alone, there will always be room in our lives for human-made creations instead of those intended solely by machines (even if they come out first).

Conclusion

AI is divisive, and it's easy to see why. On one hand, we have all the hype about how AI will take over the world and make us obsolete. On the other hand, there are very real limitations in terms of what AI can do right now—and that doesn't even address whether or not it should be allowed to learn on its own (if at all). It's also important to remember that AI has a long way to go before it becomes truly "intelligent" (whatever that means), so these concerns may turn out to be moot by then anyway!