At a recent hearing at the House Oversight Subcommittee on Information Technology, Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) asked a panel of technologists to estimate when they believed artificial intelligence (AI) would pass the Turing Test. The Turing Test measures if a machine exhibits intelligent behavior indistinguishable from a human. The witnesses were unanimous: 20 years at the earliest.
If this type of general AI currently eludes us and will remain out of our reach for two more decades, what explains the constant media hype surrounding the topic? The answer is that a different type of AI, “narrow AI,” already profoundly shapes the daily experience of a large segment of the American population. In general, the term AI refers to any technology that performs human-like decision making. This concept encompasses a much broader set of use cases than the science fiction blockbuster examples ingrained in the popular imagination. Amazon’s Echo, Apple’s Siri, and Spotify’s music recommendation algorithm all represent common, high-profile uses of AI. But small businesses and app developers also use AI to create innovative features for consumers, such as health data analytics, facial recognition add-ons, and personalized educational plans.
Because AI can disrupt traditional governance, it presents a challenge and an opportunity for lawmakers. Deriving greater insights from infrastructure, improving defensive and offensive cybersecurity capabilities, and supporting efficient budgeting decisions represent just a few of the benefits effective AI deployment can offer the government. Of course, implementing and integrating technologies within various agencies across the federal government presents an enormous managerial challenge. Our nation’s policymakers must define the proper rules for new technologies as the private sector develops AI, ensuring that government policies do not impede its development while providing targeted support where warranted. Slowing down AI development with overregulation or underinvestment could devalue it even before government agencies can adopt it. The result would be technology at the speed of government and legislative gridlock that can block AI’s path to success.
So how did we get here? Following several “AI winters”—periods in which AI development temporarily cooled-off—we find ourselves once again in the midst of rapidly accelerating progress. Impelled by advances in computing power, much larger data sets (big data), and smarter algorithms, this progress has emboldened AI researchers, who have in turn received optimistic investments from major technology companies.
While these breakthroughs stand to improve productivity and economic efficiency, some speculate that widespread automation may result in massive job displacement in the labor force. To be sure, for some jobs—such as cashiers—we already see how the shift toward an increasingly digital economy results in the ceding of certain repetitive job functions. But many labor economists do not necessarily predict a dystopian, robot-driven future: recent research from McKinsey indicates that while new technologies will augment certain job functions and obviate the need for some positions entirely, automation will also create new jobs in the long-term.
The best part is that these new jobs won’t just benefit the technologically-advanced or Silicon Valley dwellers. Uber recently released a report that noted self-driving trucks may actually increase trucking jobs on net since automated trucks would require human assistance at multiple points in the hauling process. Meanwhile, Georgetown professor and Brookings economist Harry Holzer points out that the retirement of the Baby Boomer generation—coupled with a glut of rurally-located job vacancies for associate degree level workers in the healthcare and advanced manufacturing fields—should assuage automation-driven job displacement.
App Association members and other mobile software developers are continually finding new ways to leverage AI to provide vital services to companies on the back-end and consumers on the front-end. It should not come as a surprise that our nation’s app developers and tech innovators are located in most congressional districts, with 83 percent of them located outside of Silicon Valley. As society moves to adopt these technologies on a greater scale, it is of utmost importance to ensure developers of all sizes and in all corners of the nation can contribute to this important trend. The App Association will continue to find opportunities to secure a level playing field for our nation’s most innovative companies in artificial intelligence and machine learning and beyond.
To learn more about how small businesses can support the growth of AI and prepare American workers for jobs driven by these industries, join ACT | The App Association for our “New Collar Revolution” panel at SXSW on Sunday, March 11th. Learn more here.