Robots and artificial intelligence penetrate deeper and deeper into human life, changing its usual way. The trend of the XXI century is to simplify the solution of labor-intensive everyday tasks with the help of new technologies, devoting the free time to self-education and creativity. The near future can no longer be imagined without an unmanned electric taxi, triggered by a voice request, and a smart system that allows you to make purchases in the store without using the checkout counter. About when these technologies will enter everyone’s life and whether people should be afraid of being replaced by robots at work – a joint project of Lenta.ru and Sberbank.
A matter of technology
“Imagine that you are on the cusp of a new industry. The industry is based on cutting-edge technology, but it has yet to catch on, with several large companies making one-off products for businesses, and smaller start-ups busy with niche toys for the enthusiast. Their projects are complex and slowly developing, they do not have a single standard. Therefore, despite all the attention, no one can say for sure when this industry will go mainstream. But when it does, it will change the world, ”- this is how Bill Gates described robotics in 2008. He is sure that in the near future robots will become a familiar device in offices, on city streets and in apartments. Just like computers, which literally in a couple of decades from being a fortune of room-sized machines became compact and accessible to everyone.
In the modern sense, this is a device that performs work according to an algorithm pre-installed in it.
The labor of such “forced laborers” has been used in factories since the 1960s, but only under strictly controlled conditions and for simple tasks. Already at the end of the 20th century, it became clear that simple tasks for robots were over. Since the beginning of the new millennium, robots of a new generation – the so-called smart robots – have been rapidly introduced in manufacturing, service and healthcare. The further development of robotics directly depends on the pace of development of elements of artificial intelligence that allow robots to perceive the world around them and learn.
Starting from the second decade of the 21st century, the world is undergoing the fourth industrial revolution: literally before our eyes, the complexity of the tasks performed by robots is increasing and new niches are opening up for their application. The largest technology companies are leading this process and by their developments are bringing closer a convenient and secure future, where AI and robots, with their readiness to work 24×7 in various fields, will become traditional participants in our life.
According to a Brookings Institution study using data from public and private sources in the United States, the introduction of artificial intelligence and automation will affect most modern professions: by 2030, up to 39 percent of all jobs in the United States will be automated. The biggest changes are expected in the professions associated with the execution of routine tasks, where large amounts of data are manually processed. Among these, one can single out the sphere of public transport, construction, security, office work, accounting. Less – in areas related to creativity and human use of social and emotional intelligence: in health care, education and the service sector.
American inventor and futurist Raymond Kurzweil is confident that ultimately people will benefit from automation and artificial intelligence technologies, since instead of routine work they will be able to devote more time to self-development.
And the international expert in the field of artificial intelligence and data mining Yang Quang admits that the combination of big data and artificial intelligence technologies will help some developing countries catch up and even overtake the developed ones: and the processing of the collected data. For example, the rapid development of the Internet and mobile communications in China has allowed a large amount of information to be collected, which has accelerated the development of AI in the country. It can change the existing world order. ”
All the head
Today, large corporations, businessmen and heads of state often talk about the development of artificial intelligence and the decisive role that this technology will play in redistributing the balance of power in the world. Of the 9,100 patents granted by IBM in 2018, nearly 18 percent are related to this technology. Tesla founder Elon Musk, who has repeatedly called AI a threat to humanity, donated $ 10 million to the nonprofit research firm Open-air. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, artificial intelligence will become the basis for another leap forward in the development of all mankind.
AI-based computer vision systems are already being used to detect and classify events in unmanned vehicles: a shoebox-sized device can see and recognize almost anything. For example, which way the driver is looking when driving, how fast he is going, where pedestrians and other cars are. The software automatically detects danger and signals it. Thus, artificial intelligence reduces the number of road accidents.
Through the use of chat bots, the interaction between the client and the service provider is reaching a new level. During testing, Alexander’s met robot, developed by Sberbank and the Moscow Metro team, managed to process 88 percent of passengers’ requests. All components of the chatbot and the Chat Navigator dialogue platform, on the basis of which the met robot was created, are located in the cloud.
Now you can entrust your daily chores to virtual assistants who will order pizza, tell you about the weather, tell you a movie to watch and call a taxi. Large companies like Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft are building entire digital ecosystems around their own virtual and physical assistants. One of the largest such ecosystems in Russia is being created by Sberbank. The assistants of the Salut family received three characters – the erudite Sober, the cheerful Joy and the pedantic Athena – and are available in the SberBox TV set-top box, on the SberPortal home screen, and in the Sober Sober and Sober Online applications.
Machine vision and hearing systems are capable of recognizing and classifying objects and speech with an accuracy far superior to that of humans. Only yesterday, the developments considered to be futuristic fairy tales and toys of geeks are rapidly changing the face of production and trade, leading to the restructuring of supply chains and to noticeable shifts in the labor market. If in the last century the iron horse came to replace the peasant horse, today it is time to talk about a digital horse that can work tirelessly and give results in a matter of seconds.
