AI for Social Good

8The Future

“I always avoid prophesying beforehand because it is much better to prophesy after the event has already taken place.”

– Winston S. Churchill

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new.”

– Alfred Lord Tennyson

THE FUTURE OF artificial intelligence in the hands of its human masters is large and bright, and admittedly accompanied by more than a twinge of trepidation. Similar emotions must have accompanied earlier breakthroughs in human society. When the telephone and the radio were invented, prognosticators of the time could promise widespread faster communication and easier access to information, but the deeper societal transformation they would bring about was much harder to anticipate. Global convulsions occurred as they enabled wars to be coordinated on a worldwide scale. At the same time, these technologies fostered a sense of unity and shared experience. For the first time, entire nations could tune in to the same broadcasts and share common narratives.

Now, with artificial intelligence, we are at a similar pivot in history, but something is different. Machines have reached a stage where they are no longer confined to replicating human motor functions. They are reaching deeper into human essence and replicating how we think and imagine. Though still in its infancy, the swift progress of artificial intelligence we've seen so far foretells the emergence of systems capable of creativity, logic, and problem-solving skills that were once considered solely ...