The real face of artificial intelligence: Why it’s is already all around us

Artificial intelligence (A.I. as many refer to it) is quickly becoming our reality. And even though its technology is all around us, many of us don't understand what that technology is.

The "misconception" about artificial intelligence , is that it's a "robot," says Tim Urban, whose stick-figure-filled explainer on the technology has been read by more than 4 million people on his website, Wait But Why.

The robot, however, is merely the "container" for the artificial intelligence, Urban told Olivia Stern for "Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist." "The A.I. is the software inside the container. The A.I. is, in particular, software that can make decisions."

Here, in an excerpt from Wait But Why, Urban explains why artificial intelligence will be changing your life before you know it. Read the full post here.

What does it feel like to stand here?

It seems like a pretty intense place to be standing—but then you have to remember something about what it's like to stand on a time graph: you can't see what's to your right. So here's how it actually feels to stand there:

Imagine taking a time machine back to 1750—a time when the world was in a permanent power outage, long-distance communication meant either yelling loudly or firing a cannon in the air, and all transportation ran on hay. When you get there, you retrieve a dude, bring him to 2015, and then walk him around and watch him react to everything. It's impossible for us to understand what it would be like for him to see shiny capsules racing by on a highway, talk to people who had been on the other side of the ocean earlier in the day, watch sports that were being played 1,000 miles away, hear a musical performance that happened 50 years ago, and play with my magical wizard rectangle that he could use to capture a real-life image or record a living moment, generate a map with a paranormal moving blue dot that shows him where he is, look at someone's face and chat with them even though they're on the other side of the country, and worlds of other inconceivable sorcery. This is all before you show him the internet or explain things like the International Space Station, the Large Hadron Collider, nuclear weapons, or general relativity.

This experience for him wouldn't be surprising or shocking or even mind-blowing—those words aren't big enough. He might actually die.

But here's the interesting thing—if he then went back to 1750 and got jealous that we got to see his reaction and decided he wanted to try the same thing, he'd take the time machine and go back the same distance, get someone from around the year 1500, bring him to 1750, and show him everything. And the 1500 guy would be shocked by a lot of things—but he wouldn't die. It would be far less of an insane experience for him, because while 1500 and 1750 were very different, they were much lessdifferent than 1750 to 2015. The 1500 guy would learn some mind-bending shit about space and physics, he'd be impressed with how committed Europe turned out to be with that new imperialism fad, and he'd have to do some major revisions of his world map conception. But watching everyday life go by in 1750—transportation, communication, etc.—definitely wouldn't make him die.

No, in order for the 1750 guy to have as much fun as we had with him, he'd have to go much farther back—maybe all the way back to about 12,000 BC, before the First Agricultural Revolution gave rise to the first cities and to the concept of civilization. If someone from a purely hunter-gatherer world—from a time when humans were, more or less, just another animal species—saw the vast human empires of 1750 with their towering churches, their ocean-crossing ships, their concept of being "inside," and their enormous mountain of collective, accumulated human knowledge and discovery—he'd likely die.

And then what if, after dying, he got jealous and wanted to do the same thing.;

Share it:
Share it:

[Social9_Share class=”s9-widget-wrapper”]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

You Might Be Interested In

Smart cities 2.0: what works today

13 May, 2017

Let’s imagine a modern city in 2020. It is a smart city. Urban planning, ecology, and information technology reach into …

Read more

Leading from the front with Helen Yu

27 Jun, 2021

Helen Yu, a partner and consultant to the world’s largest technology companies such as IBM, AT&T, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Vodafone among …

Read more

Enabling a digital and analytics transformation in heavy-industry manufacturing

10 Jan, 2020

In earlier articles, we have shown how digital and advanced analytics (DnA) technologies have significant potential to improve manufacturing operations …

Read more

Do You Want to Share Your Story?

Bring your insights on Data, Visualization, Innovation or Business Agility to our community. Let them learn from your experience.

Get the 3 STEPS

To Drive Analytics Adoption
And manage change

3-steps-to-drive-analytics-adoption

Get Access to Event Discounts

Switch your 7wData account from Subscriber to Event Discount Member by clicking the button below and get access to event discounts. Learn & Grow together with us in a more profitable way!

Get Access to Event Discounts

Create a 7wData account and get access to event discounts. Learn & Grow together with us in a more profitable way!

Don't miss Out!

Stay in touch and receive in depth articles, guides, news & commentary of all things data.