Quite regularly, articles announce AI and/or the Internet of Things are close to arriving in a writ-large way, and they’re all more or less correct. It’s happening soon, provided you don’t define soon too rigidly. The latter, which will be both boon and bane, seems something we could do right now if we could agree on standards. The former is improving rapidly in so-called Weak AI, which will remove human hands from many of Labor’s wheels. The more complicated Strong AI (the conscious kind) isn’t likely upon us despite the hype. Even before it has the chance to be realized, however, machine intelligence will bring serious peril along with unprecedented promise.

In his latest Washington Post editorial, Vivek Wadhwa sees the Google Glass half full, believing we’re on the brink of major AI advances. He makes a sound if hopeful argument, though he utilizes a quote in his opening from an old Brad Darrach Life article that has had its accuracy questioned. Wadhwa writes “Despite Marvin Minsky’s 1970 prediction that “in from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being,’ we still consider that a feat of science fiction.” Minsky immediately and vehemently denied making this statement to Darrach, and as John Markoff wrote in his recent book, Machines of Loving Grace, other important points of the piece were disputed. Wadhwa’s larger idea that big predictions have been too ambitious in the past is true, though this particular example seems flawed.

An excerpt:

AI has applications in every area in which data are processed and decisions required. Wired founding editor Kevin Kelly likened AI to electricity: a cheap, reliable, industrial-grade digital smartness running behind everything. He said that it “will enliven inert objects, much as electricity did more than a century ago. Everything that we formerly electrified we will now ‘cognitize.’ This new utilitarian AI will also augment us individually as people (deepening our memory, speeding our recognition) and collectively as a species. There is almost nothing we can think of that cannot be made new, different, or interesting by infusing it with some extra IQ. In fact, the business plans of the next 10,000 start-ups are easy to forecast: Take X and add AI This is a big deal, and now it’s here.”

AI will soon be everywhere. Businesses are infusing AI into their products and helping them analyze the vast amounts of data they are gathering. Google, Amazon, and Apple are working on voice assistants for our homes that manage our lights, order our food, and schedule our meetings. Robotic assistants such as Rosie from The Jetsons and R2-D2 of Star Wars are about a decade away.

Do we need to be worried about the runaway “artificial general intelligence” that goes out of control and takes over the world? Yes — but perhaps not for another 15 or 20 years. There are justified fears that rather than being told what to learn and complementing our capabilities, AIs will start learning everything there is to learn and know far more than we do. Though some people, such as futurist Ray Kurzweil, see us using AI to augment our capabilities and evolve together, others, such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, fear that AI will usurp us. We really don’t know where all this will go.

What is certain is that AI is here and making amazing things possible.•