Author: GW Alger

Modern AI needs tons of data for training and quality control — and a lot of it is coming from human beings, whether it’s contract workers recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk or regular users filling out a CAPTCHA.

The exchange of our personal data with marketing companies for services that makes our lives easier opens up ethical concerns. For AI to achieve its promise of true personalization and prediction, it needs a massive amount of data. You give up privacy for the power of AI.

Artificial intelligence is intended to make lives better and more efficient, but it can replace tasks that can be automated. So there is a reality that companies will want to become more efficient by eliminating humans where they can, because if they don’t, their competitors will.

Some examples of jobs that may go away are telemarketing and writing earnings reports and media buyers and anything that a machine can do better.

AI needs to be solving a business problem or helping to achieve a goal more efficiently for it to make sense as a business application. Some examples touched upon in this video include using AI for recommendations, optimization and categorizations.

Machine learning can be defined as making predictions on future outcomes based on historical data. The key to machine learnings is that the machines are getting smarter and their predictions are getting better without any human intervention.

Law enforcement agencies like the New Orleans Police Department are adopting artificial-intelligence based systems to analyze surveillance footage. WSJ’s Jason Bellini gets a demonstration of the tracking technology and hears why some think it’s a game changer, while for others it’s raising concerns around privacy and potential bias.

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently explained what he believes is necessary to rule the world. “If someone could guarantee themselves a monopoly in the area of artificial intelligence, the consequences are clear to us all – they would become the world ruler,” the TASS news agency cited Putin as saying.

The Russian president remarked that the fight for technological superiority, including in the field of AI, has already become a field for global competition. “The speed at which new products and solutions are created is growing exponentially,” he observed.

Putin noted that many countries have already chosen their strategies concerning AI. “We too, of course, must ensure our technological sovereignty in the AI field,” he said, adding that it is the most important condition for the success of Russia’s business, economy, security, defensive capability and quality of human life.