The bots are here already

Self-driving cars, buses, trains and aircraft. Appliances that talk to each other. Refrigerators that place orders when they sense dwindling stocks of food.

Self-driving cars, buses, trains and aircraft. Appliances that talk to each other. Refrigerators that place orders when they sense dwindling stocks of food. Phones that double as your personal assistant. All this is already here. Phrases like Internet of Things, machine learning and artificial intelligence have become buzzwords, raising hopes and fears in equal measure. While they mean different things, the bottom line is that machines are increasingly taking over tasks which we assumed require human intelligence­— and doing a better job of it.

Imagine a robot/humanoid army guarding your borders, capable of differentiating between friend and foe, and acting accordingly. While many people shudder at the thought, others point out that humans don’t need to die in battle anymore. No matter which side of the fence we are on, the fact remains that there’s no stopping the rise of machines. Businesses have of course been early adaptors of this acutely disruptive technology, using big data and algorithms which allow them to optimise costs.

IBM Watson’s chatbot, for instance, can apparently understand, reason, learn, and interact with people. These virtual agents can also provide personalised recommendations by understanding a user’s emotion. And through partnerships with Quest Diagnostics & Illumina, and the genomics sequencing capabilities of Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Watson helps oncologists identify personalised approaches to cancer treatments for their patients.

Then there is Amazon, which has made huge sums of money from its transaction algorithm, which grows increasingly smarter about customer needs. This algorithm, which has been in use for a while now, is getting increasingly better at predicting at what we’re interested in purchasing based on our online behaviour. In fact, Amazon plans to ship products to us even before we know we need them, though it hasn’t quite gotten there yet. But it’s most certainly on the  horizon.

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The New Indian Express
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