Week 12: Artificial Intelligence

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Although I am someone who is not very well-educated on artificial intelligence, I am very interested in learning more about it, especially in regard to how it will change politics, economics, business, and everything else in between in the future.  I also understand that there are a lot of sources of fake information, particularly when dealing with a new and unpredictable topic such as artificial intelligence.  I have talked about infographics and dashboards for the last eleven weeks.  I have told you guys about all of the different systems and software that you can use to create these useful and efficient tools.  But now, I must force you to consider the influx of artificial intelligence into the workplace and how that will affect jobs in infographics and data visualization in the future. 

Throughout my research into the topic, I played a kind of a devil's advocate for artificial intelligence and really tried to look at things it through a critical lens and really get down to the cold hard truth about what impact artificial intelligence will have on our lives in the future.  All of this talk about infographics and data visualization is just two examples of how advancements in technology have really changed the world.  Marketing used to be done by word of mouth.  My grandpa owns a small family business in which my dad, two uncles, and cousin all work at.  They pretty much still do all of their marketing and networking by word of mouth, and that is why companies like this will be incredibly threatened by artificial intelligence because it will be difficult for people to even know that they exist.  Some people may contrast this point with the fact that those services will still be needed by people so the company will survive, but this can be discredited by the fact that artificial intelligence companies will be able to perform the services for a much lower price and at a faster speed.  Maybe not at first, but in the long run, I can guarantee they will.

An article I found talks about the advancements that computers will be making in the near future, and how they will have the capability of reaching deep within the human mind.  It is very interesting and also includes a really cool interactive infographic that I would encourage you to check out.  Here is the link to that infographic if you're interested. 

I read an article that is basically sending out a warning signal to everyone in the workforce.  It contains links to a bunch of other articles discussing artificial intelligence as well.  One that I found very interesting was titled, "Technology vs. The Middle Class."  A line in this article that I think is really important to consider is this, "A solution like this relies on the willingness of companies to use such a tool to retrain workers, or on laid-off workers winning a government-sponsored retraining race against increasingly adaptable machines.  This basically supports the idea that the government needs to be involved in making sure that people are not left behind in the race for artificial intelligence.  Also, people need to be just as adaptable, if not more, than machines. 

This whole idea of adaptation is very important to consider.  This reminded me of another topic that I have been reading a lot about is climate change.  In one of the books that I have read by a Nobel Prize-winning economist, William Nordhaus.  The book is titled, The Climate Casino and in it, he explains that there are certain systems that will adapt over time.  Some examples are health care and agriculture.  He pretty much says that since those systems are highly managed and regulated already, people and policy will find a way to cope with the issues that come up.  He enforces that what people really need to be worrying about in regard to climate change are the unmanaged systems such as hurricanes, rising sea levels, and droughts.  Considering this, I would qualify artificial intelligence as an unmanaged system.  There really are no regulations in place to manage it.  Those people that are aware of the dawn of the age of artificial intelligence will reap the benefits, and those that are not will suffer the consequences.

Another article talks about the importance of coding and how code schools will need to continue to grow and expand.  This creates jobs because there will be a demand for teachers, but not if artificial intelligence gets those jobs first.  The article states, "As software continues to eat the world, what health care, banking, manufacturing and heavy industry seek are workaday coders who can digitize outdated business processes.  Nine out of ten open coding jobs are outside of Silicon Valley."  A significant portion of jobs will require or involve some kind of coding in the future, so people need to adapt and learn those skills now before the computers do it better first.