WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

Dimitris Papageorgiou, Partner, People Advisory Services, Ernst & Young LLP
John Van Reenen, Professor, MIT Department of Economics and MIT Sloan School of Management
Krystyn Van Vliet, Professor of Material Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering, MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering

The AI Index is an open, not-for-profit project to track activity and progress in AI. It aspires to be a comprehensive resource of data and analysis for policymakers, researchers, executives, journalists and others to rapidly develop intuitions about the complex field of AI.
AI is the new electricity, and is transforming multiple industries. The AI Index will help current generations track and navigate this societal transformations. It will also help future generations look back and understand the AI's rise.

This guide is for anyone who is curious about machine learning but has no idea where to start. I imagine there are a lot of people who tried reading the wikipedia article, got frustrated and gave up wishing someone would just give them a high-level explanation. That’s what this is. The goal is be accessible to anyone — which means that there’s a lot of generalizations. But who cares? If this gets anyone more interested in ML, then mission accomplished.

This technology is called face recognition. Facebook’s algorithms are able to recognize your friends’ faces after they have been tagged only a few times. It’s pretty amazing technology — Facebook can recognize faces with 98% accuracy which is pretty much as good as humans can do!

When it comes to developing self-driving cars, experience is key to making the technology safe and ready for the road. That’s why we’ve been working to make Waymo the world’s most experienced driver…

What AI can — and cannot — do for your organization.

Today facial recognition sensors, that track the face of shoppers, are starting to become adopted by retailers in prime markets.

Exclusive research by us at LDV Capital is the first publicly shared, in-depth analysis which estimates how many cameras will be in the world in 2022. Key Findings include:

• Most of the pictures captured will never be seen by a human eye.
• A paradigm shift will take place in the meaning and use of a camera.
• Over the next five years there will be a proliferation of cameras integrated into products across industries and markets.
• Where there is growth in cameras there will be tremendous business opportunities in the capture, analysis and interpretation of visual data.
• Depth capture will double the number of cameras in handheld cameras.
• By 2022, the number of cameras will be nearly 12X the 2012 figures.
• Your smartphone will have between 4 and 10 cameras by 2022.
• The Internet of Eyes will be larger than the Internet of Things.
• In the next five years, robotics will have 20X more integrated cameras.
• By 2022, all new vehicles will be equipped with more than 25 cameras and this does not include Lidar or Radar.

The latest paper shows that two Apple scientists have devised a new technology called VoxelNet for detecting small obstacles using LiDAR.

Automation will eliminate jobs but it will also create them. Here are 21 jobs that will exist in the future.

MouseLight is the most detailed map of the mouse brain yet. Scientists hope this brain map, and others like it, can help unravel the brain's mysteries.

By next year, around 75% of financial firms will either explore or implement artificial intelligence technologies, according to a survey by Greenwich Associates. The research and consulting firm thinks some 15% of the industry’s jobs are at risk.

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology point out that when automotive transport arrived, a whole group of workers—horses—were displaced, never to be employed again. They lost their jobs and vanished from the economy.
I would add another historical precedent. Offshoring in the last few decades has eaten up physical jobs and whole industries, jobs that were not replaced. The current transfer of jobs from the physical to the virtual economy is a different sort of offshoring, not to a foreign country but to a virtual one. If we follow recent history we can’t assume these jobs will be replaced either.

While it’s still incomplete, I thought it was important to update the map currently being sent around and reinforce the idea that this ecosystem is in constant flux. Already, our list has mushroomed from about 160 startups to over 550. Goes to show how much is happening just below our attention.

Here's how the system works. Its proprietary AI system is built, in part, with TensorFlow, Google's open-source AI kit. The lab has 20 cameras overhead, which are used to track people and products. Fisher says it first trains the AI on products with a two-minute long video capturing event they call the "SKU-dance." Once an item is filmed from every possible angle, the AI will be able to identify it in the future.

The robots are indeed already here. I work at a university where my job is teaching students and doing research and robotics and so I really what I want to convey to you today is the trends that I see robotics research going that will ultimately turn into actual products and directions that you might be able to take advantage of in the future.

In an ongoing effort with Boston-area hospitals, including the Boston Medical Center and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, we found that we could predict hospitalizations due to these two chronic diseases about a year in advance with an accuracy rate of as much as 82%. This will give care providers the chance to intervene much earlier and head off hospitalizations.

Blade Runner 2049 misses modern strides in artificial intelligence, which is now capable of performing creative work alongside humans. The newly-emerging field known as “generative design” seeks to incorporate the computer more actively into the design process. In these kinds of computer applications, the designer uploads a “seed geometry” — akin to a keyframe reference drawing an animator might use — and then sets a series of requirements ranging from the aesthetic to the functional. The software then searches through a series of procedurally-generated designs based on the seed geometry and surfaces those that meet the requirements. The designer can select one of these “solutions” for production or to function as the next seed geometry and the process begins again.

After more than eight years of development, we’re taking the next step toward unlocking the potential of fully self-driving technology. Starting now, Waymo’s fully self-driving vehicles — our safest, most advanced vehicles on the road today — are test-driving on public roads, without anyone in the driver’s seat.

Got a crappy low-res photo you wish you could use? You can now try an AI-powered image enhancing tool for yourself with just a couple of clicks.

A survey of AI researchers tallied predictions for when machines will start beating humans at everything from LEGO assembly to essay-writing.

The robots are coming. We (as in the people who attend TED talks and things) tend to think we will probably be fine. You know, knowledge folks and all. We might not be. What will be our coping mechanisms? What can we do to be OK?

We explore CEOs’ current perceptions of how robotics in the workplace is shaping their businesses today and in the near future. We also offer our perspectives on how robotics and automation have the potential to be truly transformative in the way they create value within organisations.

Picking stuff up and putting it away sounds like child's play, but to online retailer Amazon.com, it is a high-tech, high-stakes game. This year, contestants competed in timed stowing and picking operations -- simple enough for humans yet nearly impossible for robots to perform reliably. For stowing, each robot was rated on how efficiently it could pick up items and put them on a shelf. In the picking phase, the robots had to put specified items into the proper boxes. The top eight advanced to the final round.

Next time you shop online for jeans or T-shirts from the Gap, you may have artificial intelligence to thank when the correct items arrive on your doorstep.