Saturday, November 05, 2016

AI is the new electricity: artificial power

video interview:
Andrew Ng: Why Artificial Intelligence Is the New Electricity

Home - Andrew Ng | Andrew Ng - Wikipedia

About 100 years ago world was quickly changed by introduction of "portable artificial physical power". It is now being changed again by introduction "portable artificial intelligence"

100 years ago, the main element of this was electricity, in form of AC power lines that can transfer (electric) power on long distances, i.e. Niagara Falls generator can power a electric motor to run a mill hundreds of miles away (and many other things).
www.teslasociety.com/exhibition.htm

Electricity and its Development at Niagara Falls - Pan-American Exposition of 1901 - University at Buffalo Libraries

Similar happened with gasoline and internal combustion engine, with portable concentrated chemical power, that also changed world of transportation.

Rainbow Sunset Over Niagara Falls: Wallpapers13.com


InevitableBook
AIs with the computing clouds will produce similar effect on "cognitive tasks"
At least that is the premise of  Book: The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly.
The Inevitable (book) - Wikipedia

At this stage we may still be in "electric DC" equivalent era,
when artificial cognition can be transported but not very effectively yet.
We need "electric AC" equivalent for AIs.
There is a lot of innovation in cloud computing, from containers,
to GPUs and FPGAs, HTTP2...

Soon enough we may look with nostalgia
to "archaic times" of manual problem solving without AI...
Like we may look now on horse power on historic farms:
Good for education, not effective enough for current market.

Howell Living History Farm

Great Products / Content vs. Marketing / Process

Steve Jobs Interview Product People should get promoted Over Sales Marketing People - YouTube
What Happens When Companies Forget About the Product - Michael Hyatt

"Using IBM and Xerox as examples, Jobs explained the evolution of large, successful companies:
stage 1: focus on products that solve customer problems.
stage 2: focus on sales and marketing.

stage 3: everything became about cutting costs.
Product quality suffered. Marketing budgets were slashed. Predictably, sales fell even more.
...
As sales and marketing people rise in the organization, they can edge product people out of leadership. But when expansion trumps innovation, there’s only so much time before the product stops serving customer needs. Jobs warned:

'The product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people … who have no conception of a good product vs. a bad product.'

Return to Stage 1:
  • Reconnect to real needs
  • Imagine a better solution
  • Execute with excellence"