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A quick note here from the Money and Markets team: Our own Jon Markman has a great offer coming down the pike for his Pivotal Point Trader service. So, keep your eyes peeled for it in the days ahead. In the meantime, instead of our normal Saturday digest, here’s an interesting piece on Artificial Intelligence by Jon that we think you’ll enjoy. Have a great weekend!
Apple (AAPL) this week reported it sold 78 million iPhones during the holidays. It has $246 billion in cash.
And neither of those was even the headline. The real news is that the Cupertino consumer electronics giant announced it is finally going to make Siri smarter.
By now, everyone knows voice-controlled, artificial intelligence assistants are the future of computer interfaces.
Amazon’s Alexa is cool and it works. And Ford, Volkswagen, LG and Whirlpool are bringing it to their gear. Meanwhile Siri, despite a five-year head start, has become the butt of incompetence jokes.
That’s going to change with the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 10.3. For the first time, Apple will let users share their data across iCloud.
Artificial intelligence thrives on data. It needs it to learn. Bits of code, 1s and 0s, structured specifically to interpret digitized data get better with each input.
Real, transformative artificial intelligence occurs when machines can make sense of unreliable information, think for themselves and develop unexpected-but-accurate results.
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Research firm IDC predicts demand for cognitive systems will grow from just $8 billion in 2016 to $47 billion by 2020.
“Near-term opportunities for cognitive systems are in industries such as banking, securities and investments, and manufacturing,” said Jessica Goepfert, of IDC. “In these segments, we find a wealth of unstructured data, a desire to harness insights from this information, and an openness to innovative technologies.”
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| A farmer keys in instructions and GPS coordinates to tell “smart” combines how to harvest a field. Someday soon, AI will make the combines smart enough to do their jobs without being given detailed directions. |
Artificial intelligence is already transforming modern life. Every common item that experienced a breakthrough when electrified around the time of the first Gilded Age, will make another great leap in the cognitive era.
As an example, 100 years ago, the lives of people were greatly improved by electric lights, heating and the telephone. Now lives will be transformed by intelligent lighting schemes, smart thermostat controls and smartphones that know what we want or need before we ask.
Artificial intelligence is transforming how businesses work, too. Software helps companies anticipate and react more efficiently to customers.
Digital companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Nvidia are making AI the foundation of all their efforts. Likewise, major industrial manufacturers like Ford, 3M and Caterpillar are incorporating AI in their products as fast as they can. And many small companies with AI solutions will emerge as the new Gilded Age rolls forward.
You can count on current AI looking less primitive in just a few years, however. Engineers will whittle away at the constraints of current AI applications — sending society hurtling toward a point at which software will exceed human abilities at virtually any intellectual task.
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While that seems far-fetched, engineers at nonprofit research firm OpenAI note that the progression of machine intelligence is a “double exponential” function: Human-written programs and computing power are getting better at an exponential rate. And self-learning/self-improving software will improve itself at an exponential rate. Development progress may look relatively slow at first, then suddenly go vertical.
Microsoft “envisioning guru” Dave Coplin told business leaders in a speech recently that AI is the “most important technology that anybody on the planet is working on today.” He added that it “will change how we relate to technology. It will change how we relate to each other […] It will even change how we perceive what it means to be human.”
In the very near term, artificial intelligence is going to make Siri truly smart.
AI is creeping up on modern life, and it will ultimately become one of the great investment opportunities of the new Gilded Age.
Best wishes,
Jon Markman
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I have a grandson with ADHD in high school who is having trouble learning. It occurred to me that VR may be a way for him to learn as he loves to play computer games. I talked to him about it and he thought it was a great idea.
Do you know if this is being developed yet and if so is it available to the public? I can visualize many applications in this area.
Get him off grains and sugars and preservatives in food, and look at neurofeedback, may be called biofeedback, the kind that makes the user concentrate to keep a car or ship or whatever doing a certain task. Also critical are anti inflammatory substances like astaxanthin and enhanced curcumin products with bioperine as part of the mix.
It is good to see a company prosper. The prospects for progress in the AI realm is certainly exciting. However, there is a dark cloud on the horizon. The progress will eventually remove millions of jobs from human to AI machine. In the past, in the US, the displaced workforce moved to “supervisory jobs” They shuffled paper for the government to make certain that all the regulations were being followed. A few people were able to move into “development fields.” Thus the software people who were paid well grew out of the shift. The difficult with this, is software is now being used to create the next gen of software.
Where will the fast food people go when AI machines replace them. They were not working a fast food position because they were advanced mathematician working on formulas for predictive analysis of customers. Where will the millions go? How will they be able to afford the iphone(14).
Fascinating reading. Major question – will civilization keep from blowing itself apart before we can reap all the benefits of AI?
History lesson:
Human Nature is unstable… The more we can reduce it’s terms within the overall equation, the better.
Accordingly:
I yearn for autonomous cars.