AI For Everyone

第一课 揭秘人工智能 What is AI

1.1 简介 Introduction

        Welcome to AI for everyone.AI is changing the way we work and live and this nontechnical course will teach you how to navigate the rise of AI.Whether you want to know what's behind the buzzwords or whether you want to perhaps use AI yourself either in a personal context or in a corporation or other organization,this course will teach you how.If you want to understand how AI is affecting society,and how you can navigate that,you also learn that from this course.In this first week,we'll start by cutting through the hype and giving you a realistic view of what AI really is.Let's get started.

        You've probably seen news articles about how much value AI is creating.According to a study by McKinsey Global Institute,AI is estimated to create an additional 13 trillion US dollars of value annually by the year 2030.Even though AI is already creating tremendous amounts of value into software industry,a lot of the value to be created in a future lies outside the software industry.In sectors such as retail,travel,transportation,automotive,materials,manufacturing and so on.I should have a hard time thinking of an industry that I don't think AI will have a huge impact on in the next several years.My friends and I used a challenge each other to name and industry where we don't think AI will have a huge impact.My best example was the hairdressing industry because we don't know how to use AI robotics to automate hairdressing.But, I once said this on stage and one of my friends who is a robotics professor was in the audience that day,and she actually stood up and she looked at me in the eye and she said,"You know Andrew,most people's hairstyles,I couldn't get a robot to cut their hair that way."But she looked at me and said,"Your hairstyle Andrew,that a robot can do."

        There is a lot of excitement but also a lot of unnecessary hype about AI.One of the reasons for this is because AI is actually two separate ideas.Almost all the progress we are seeing in the AI today is artificial narrow intelligence.These are AIs that do one thing such as a smart speaker or a self-driving car or AI to do web search or AI application in farming or in a factory.These types of AI are one trick ponies but when you find the appropraite trick,this can be incredibly valuable.Unfortunately,AI also refers to a second con concept of AGI or artificial general intelligence.That si the goal to bulid AI.They can do anything a human can do or maybe even be superintelligence and do even more things that any human can.I'm seeing tons of progress in ANI,artificial narrow intelligence and almost no progress to what AGI or artificial general intelligence.Both of these are worthy goals and unfortunately the rapid progress in ANI which is incredibly valuable,that has caused people to conclude that there's a lot of progress in AI,which is true.But that has caused people to falsely think that there might be a lot of progress in AGI as well which is leading to some irrational fears about evil clever robots coming over to take over humanity anytime now.I think AGI is an exciting goal for researchers to work on,but it'll take most  for technological breakthroughs before we get there and it may be decades or hundreds of years or even thousands of years away.Given how far away AGI is,I think there is no need to unduly worry about it.