Autonomous Transformation

CHAPTER 23A Deeper Dive into Artificial Intelligence

The story of artificial intelligence began in 1956. Researchers and academics set out to achieve the impossible for the betterment of humankind. Over the years, artificial intelligence has been met with optimism, skepticism, falling in and out of the public eye, and in the past decade has risen to join the most prominent topics of modern discourse.

For some, it poses the greatest threat to humankind of the twenty‐first century. For others, it holds the promise of improving the human experience and addressing some, if not many, of the world's biggest challenges.

These points of view could not be more disparate, and yet they represent a small glimpse into the wide variety of discussions taking place in the media, boardrooms, academic halls, at whiteboards, and across industries and social classes about artificial intelligence. Job loss. Job creation. Economic potential. Reshoring. Universal basic income. The end of humanity. Lights‐out factories. Ethics. Responsibility. Bias. Augmenting human potential.

At its core, it is a story of humans and machines. It begins with the question of what it means to be human, and as machines have evolved and their prevalence in modern life has increased, artificial intelligence has become the symbolic figurehead of the machine element in this story of humans and machines.

The Components of Artificial Intelligence

There is a significant degree of semantic satiation facing artificial intelligence ...