Earlier this week I attended New York’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) summit offered for free through my company. This event is meant for businesses who are interested in getting AI in the many uses of every facet of the company. The event was attended by over 5,000 “delegates” and various speakers. While I feel that the overall purpose of the event is informative, I did not find it that much useful. This is due to the fact that AI is not an easy subject to tackle.

That brings me to the title of this blog, is AI the next big thing? Over the century, there were tons of “next big thing”. The discovery of personal mobility, discovery of flight and the coming of internet to name a few. After being exposed to the subject, a developer of the “AI” and attended the many discussion of the AI – I find that the AI is an unavoidable subject that everyone is living in.

What is AI?

The AI is a broad subject that covers a wide range of automation. By just implying AI means robotics is incorrect. AI refers to automating tasks that we do every day. Going into deeper level, AI refers to making not only the tasks easier, but better. However, there are a number of risks involved. In this blog I’m not going into the subject that deep because I’m not an expert in this are.

What is AI, really?

AI is just pure “If and then” statement. In other words, it translates to cause and effect. In computer lingo, you program the machine to identify a statement or action. If the action is satisfied, what will happen next. Let’s use Alexa for an example. You can program Alexa through a routine to run the task of telling you a weather condition. “If” the temperature outside drops below 30 degree Celsius, you want Alexa to remind you to wear heavy jacket before going out to the cold. AI can be categorized in multiple categories. AI can cover front end use (i.e. applications etc), to Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Neural Network. For the sake of not confusing anyone, I will use AI to cover all these subjects.

My exposure to AI

Everyone of us are using AI whether they are aware of not. For example if you are reading this, I can assume that you already have a Netflix account. A normal user would not know that there are various AI running every time he or she opens the Netflix app. Netflix uses your past behavior and make future movie suggestion on your home screen. Additionally, Netflix uses AI to create thumbnails on the home screen. The biggest question is how did Netflix manages to do that in split second? I like everyone else are mainly user of AI. However, only the last year or so I realized that I’m a developer of AI, albeit in a small scale. I’ve been developing databases using Microsoft Access for over 15 years. During this time I crated over 50 different databases (or tools) to do things more efficiently. Additionally these tools were able to generate hundreds of different reports through conditions I built in.

Is AI easy?

Even though I’m an AI developer by definition, I would be lying to you by saying AI is easy. This is one of my criticism of the AI summit that I attended – all the speakers, delegates and the various booths at the conference seem to suggest that AI is a must have and easy. After I attended the bootcamp of Amazon Web Services (AWS) too months ago, I realized that AI is not as easy as advertised. Not only you need to understand computer lingo, you need to have a good understanding of programming. There is nothing “click” and “drag” in AI.

Should everyone work with AI?

The answer is yes. In one of the talks in the conference, the speaker mentioned that in the next several decades AI is so important that it will decide if the business will succeed or fail. Businesses who start incorporate AI in their business models will likely succeed and those who do not thing of AI today will fail (see above). That translates to the work force. If you want to succeed in the work force, you need to start thinking how to incorporate AI in your career. For years I’ve been satisfied staying in my “comfortable” spot and not worrying about my future. This is no longer the case as I see my other friends started to progress further while I feel “stagnant”. That’s why I’ve begun to explore this are a more and more.

What do you need to do now?

If you are currently in the work force, start investigating the subject on AI and how it will help you or vice versa. Start incorporating AI in your daily work. One way to do this is to look at your internal tools and processes and see if there is any option that you can make things more effectively. If you are parents with children still in grade schools, start encouraging them to learn about computer coding (particularly Phyton).

In the next several blogs, I will invest more time in discussing AI. If you have any questions of comments, feel free to respond to this blog.