rtificial intelligence (AI) has been changing our lives for decades, but never has AI felt more ubiquitous than now.
It seems as though not a week passes without yet another AI system overcoming an unprecedented hurdle or outperforming humans.
But how the future of AI will pan out for humans remains to be seen. AI could either make all our dreams come true, or destroy society and the world as we know it.
To get an a realistic handle on what that future might look like, Tech Insider spoke to 18 artificial intelligence researchers, roboticists, and computer scientists about the single most profound change artificial intelligence could bring.
Sadly Most think it is such a wonderful thing to become less then Human and more AI ..
Pieter Abbeel says robots will keep us safer, especially from disasters.
Pieter Abbeel says robots will keep us safer, especially from disasters.
Japanese officials inspect the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.REUTERS/Kyodo
AI for robotics will allow us to address the challenges in taking care of an aging population and allow much longer independence.
It'll enable drastically reducing, maybe even bringing to zero, traffic accidents and deaths. And enable disaster response for dangerous situations, for example, the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima power plant.
Commentary from Pieter Abbeel, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Shimon Whiteson says we will all become cyborgs.
Shimon Whiteson says we will all become cyborgs.
Ints Kalnins/Reuters
I really think in the future we are all going to be cyborgs. I think this is something that people really underestimate about AI. They have a tendency to think, there's us and then there's computers. Maybe the computers will be our friends and maybe they'll be our enemies, but we'll be separate from them.
I think that's not true at all, I think the human and the computer are really, really quickly becoming one tightly-coupled cognitive unit.
Imagine how much more productive we would be if we could augment our brains with infallible memories and infallible calculators.
Society is already wrestling with difficult questions about privacy and security that have been raised by the internet. Imagine when the internet is in your brain, if the NSA can see into your brain, if hackers can hack into your brain.
Imagine if skills could just be downloaded — what's going to happen when we have this kind of AI but only the rich can afford to become cyborgs, what's that going to do to society?
Commentary from Shimon Whiteson, an associate professor at the Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam.
Yoky Matsuoka says these implants will make humans better at everything.
Yoky Matsuoka says these implants will make humans better at everything.
JHU Applied Physics Laboratory
I think the way I have been promoting AI as well as the next big space aspect for AI is to become really an assistant for humans. So making humans better, making what humans want to do and what humans want to be, easier to achieve with the help from AI.
What if I lost a limb and I can't swim as fast, what if an AI can actually know how to control this robotic limb that's now attached to me to quickly and efficiently let me swim?
Those are the ways, my brain is doing control but to an extent, things that I can't do anymore or things I want to be, if that part can be intelligently handled that's really great. It's almost like a partnership.
Commentary from Yoky Matsuoka, former Vice President of Technology at Nest.
Thomas Dietterich doesn't stop there, he hopes AI will turn us into superhumans.
Thomas Dietterich doesn't stop there, he hopes AI will turn us into superhumans.
Yuriko Nakao
I think combinations of human and artificial intelligence are fascinating and have potential to create combined systems that are smarter than either alone. We already see this in many applications of AI — I'm smarter when I have access to Google.
Future systems may work via augmented reality or by giving us sensory abilities far beyond existing vision, hearing, and manipulation. For example, I hope that exoskeletons will allow me to walk when I am old and feeble. I hope that I can retain my sense of hearing and sight even as my eyes and ears fail.
Commentary from Thomas Dietterich, the President of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
Stuart Russell says very smart computers could solve all our problems, including climate change.
Stuart Russell says very smart computers could solve all our problems, including climate change.
AP
If you had a system that could read all the pages and understand the context instead of just throwing back 26 million pages to answer your query, that kind of program could actually answer the questions asked.
It'll be like if you asked a real question and got an answer from a person who had really read all those millions and millions and billions of pages and understood them and been able to synthesize all that information.
Everything we have of value as human beings, as a civilization, is the result of our intelligence and what AI could do is essentially be a power tool that magnifies human intelligence and gives us the ability to move our civilization forward in all kinds of ways.
It might be curing disease, it might eliminating poverty. I think it certainly should be preventing environmental catastrophe. AI could be instrumental to all those things.
Commentary from Stuart Russell, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Oren Etzioni says AI might even save the world.
Oren Etzioni says AI might even save the world.
NASA Johnson/YouTube
When we're talking about something that is at least 50 to 100, maybe even a thousand years away, it's very speculative. But when and if we have that, I would say that the sky's the limit.
All these things that we've contemplated, whether it's space travel or solutions to diseases that plague us, Ebola virus, all of these things would be a lot more tractable if the machines are trying to solve these problems.
I view today's computers as souped-up pencils but nowhere near the potential that they could have if they were able to perform effectively, much more sophisticated.
Commentary from Oren Etzioni, the CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Sabine Hauert says it will open up whole new worlds to explore.
Sabine Hauert says it will open up whole new worlds to explore.
Paramount Pictures
I really think that robotics is going to improve the way we work, the way we live, and the way we explore new frontiers — if you think of the ocean, if you think of space. I think this will be done incrementally, because it's a hard thing to do.
I think it's going to also be integrated in the sense that you might have a robot car, but you're not going to think of it as an AI or a robot, you're going to think of it as a car.
A lot of these things that we'll be introducing will be seen as helpful technologies, just like your cell phone is a helpful technology, but not as lots of robots entering our work or entering our homes. They'll just be seen as smarter tech.
Commentary from Sabine Hauert, a roboticist at Bristol University.
Joanna Bryson says some of these amazing applications are already here, and it's making people easier to predict.
Joanna Bryson says some of these amazing applications are already here, and it's making people easier to predict.
Garry Knight/Flickr
Basically what learning is about, including machine learning, is using the past to make predictions about the future.
You might be able to predict who will start dating or who will get divorced. You can figure out when people are going to have kids sometimes by just the stuff they buy and what neighborhoods they move into. You can figure out more and more intimate details and be able to predict what each other will do.
People are already getting really good at predicting what we are going to do and then manipulating that to get us to buy things, or to vote particular ways.
Joanna Bryson, computer scientist and visiting fellow at the Princeton University.
But these changes will happen so slowly we won't notice it at first, Peter Stone says.
But these changes will happen so slowly we won't notice it at first, Peter Stone says.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
There's not one most significant change it will make.
Artificial intelligence is really embedded in many of the devices we already use, from cars to search engines, everything, and I think all of these, every technology we use changes our lives in profound ways.
I don't think there's a single change that going to be black and white once we're on one side and now there's a change and we're on the other side. It's a cumulative effect of everything, AI is embedded in many of the technologies that have been changing our world over the last several decades and will continue to do so.
Commentary from Peter Stone, a computer scientist at the University of Texas, Austin.
As more sophisticated AI trickles into our lives, Hector Geffner says it will also change how we connect with other humans.
As more sophisticated AI trickles into our lives, Hector Geffner says it will also change how we connect with other humans.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Picture
One significant change will be socialization. The movie "Her" goes in that direction.
We are social beings and need people around, but increasingly, in some societies, many people seem to be more comfortable dealing with people through machines — through mobile, messenger, etc — than in person.
As machines get more intelligent and can better adapt to its "users," people may end up preferring dealing with machines than with people. Of course, this says something about who we are.
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http://www.techinsider.io/researchers-predictions-future-artificial-intelligence-2015-10