Current Applications of AI

There is an exhaustive list of current applications of AI that we could choose from.

The ones discussed below highlight the dramatic impact AI is already having in particular industries. See below to learn more about these applications.

1. AI in Micro Trading – Stock Markets

This is the utilisation of AI to aid in microsecond stock market trades that interject themselves in between human stock buy and sell orders, producing minute profits millions of times per second. The resulting benefit to the bottom line of Trading Houses’ adds up to billions of dollars each year, so perhaps this is the most profitable utilisation of AI.

2. AI Voice Assistants

Google Duplex Demo: Google Assistant calls businesses to make appointments.

The goal for these AI based voice assistants (like Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa) is to democratise the personal assistant, allowing anyone who can own a smart phone to simply speak requests to a disembodied voice, and it will follow your commands, setting up appointments, booking tables for dinner, arranging flights, and reminding you to undertake important tasks. The reality is not quite to this level yet, but it has progressed very far in the last five years, and the example of Google Assistant making calls to book haircuts and tables at restaurants is a perfect display of how far this has come (Guzman, 2019).

3. AI in Cryptography

It is expected, that just as the Internet changed the way we communicate, so will the combination of AI and cryptocurrency change money and payments. Integrating AI, cryptocurrency and blockchain will provide us with a world that contains much less corruption. It will affect governments, banks and every facility that deals with the public’s money. But money is not everything. Accuracy and integrity will add up to a better world for everyone. AI and cryptocurrency blockchain have the power to connect the world into one, eliminating many barriers and democratising finance to empower the working and middle class by providing them with banking and financial services previously only accessible to the very wealthy.

Blockchain is the process that allows for information to be transferred in a safe and virtually un-hackable fashion. Cryptocurrency are the tokens or coins that flow via a blockchain, created in such a fashion that they can’t be duplicated (or double-spent). We need the AI application here for the worldwide and complex exchange, storing, recording, reporting and trading of these digital assets.

4. AI in Image Recognition – Computer Vision

How China is building an all-seeing surveillance state.

AI Computer Vision is the ability for AI to ‘see’. Practically applied though, this means your phone can sort your images by the people in them, recognise the contours of your face (even in the dark) to unlock your phone, and allow you to access your hotel room without the need to carry a key around. This is more than just the ‘eyes’ of the computer. You can think of it as the part of your brain that interprets what it is you are seeing (Huang, 2018).

5. AI Robots – Theory of Mind (replicating the human consciousness)

“The next big thing for AI is collaboration,” said Dr. Jun Wang at University College London. This is a great idea, however AI make poor collaborators at present. They have a lot of trouble understanding our motives, our reasoning, our intentions and what our goals are without being explicitly told. This is where Theory of Mind (ToM) comes in. The concept, developed by Prof. Daniel C. Dennett, allows for a replication of the way our mind works within the AI, therefore allowing for a better understanding of what we are thinking and doing. This would allow for the AI to place itself in the human’s shoes and understand the world somewhat through the perspective of that human.

We are a long way off a functioning ToM driven AI, but the rewards for getting there provide a strong incentive for a lot of research in this area. A ToM driven AI could learn tasks, act and interact in the same way a human does (only with computer level capabilities in narrow areas). It could care for your children, look after your ailing parents, and even act as a companion and lover.

This section has considered only a few of the many current uses of AI, including robotics, cryptocurrency, image recognition, micro-trading and voice assistants. Hopefully, the information provided has peaked your interest. In the next section, we will now explore some more unique and exciting applications of AI.

Additional Resources

Delgado, A. (2018, June 13). Three Impacts Of Artificial Intelligence On Society. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/06/13/three-impacts-of-artificial-intelligence-on-society/#579e6e326ec0

“It’s likely that machines will be smarter than us before the end of the century—not just at chess or trivia questions but at just about everything, from mathematics and engineering to science and medicine.”
Gary Marcus – Professor of Psychology and Neural Science, New York University