I haven't bought completely into all the AI hype, so take this with a grain of salt, but I feel like on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being human, we are at a 3 or 4. Boston Dynamics is trying to do things at level 8 with tools still stuck at the lower levels of AI. If there is a massive economic opportunity for AI tech that's available now, it's figuring out how to get it out of SV and making it useful for small businesses across the country. There are literally thousands of tasks that can be done faster and better using AI, but the problem is to use AI, you need someone skilled in basic programming to spend a week teaching themselves the basics before they can even begin to think about solving real business problems. Simplifying AI tools to the point where someone with basic excel/web browser skills can learn and apply this tech to their business operations in a few hours' time will be key to unlocking this opportunity.
I'm sure "machine learning for MBAs" will be a thing very soon if the current trajectory holds.
Using a scale of 1-10 to rate the "human-ness" of AI belies the complexity of the situation. Computers are already better than humans at a huge number of tasks. In other areas, they haven't reached the level of an infant, or even a mouse.
I'm not talking about teaching ML or AI to MBA's, I'm talking about making the technology easy enough to use that it is accessible to practically anyone. ML can have lots of benefits to many small businesses where parts of their operations are highly repeatable, but variable enough that they can't necessarily be automated away. Figuring out how to use ML in cases like this can improve quality control, efficiency, and a host of other factors, but owners of many small businesses don't have the technical skills or time to invest in learning AI. What they do have is a few thousand dollars to invest in something that could make their business better, but there needs to be a Wordpress or Excel of AI to bring the technology to them.
Well a car operates in only two dimensions and has one given goal of transport from point A to B, so a car would maybe be a 5 or a 6. Keep in mind this scale is how close we are to actual human simulation. Humans brains deal with setting their own goals, dealing with conflicting information in pursuit of those goals, making trade offs, a constant influx of new information that affects variables in the decision making process, etc, all of which have yet to be adequately solved by AI. As the article points out, there are lots of mechanical/hardware complexities that further complicate the software with human robotics, and don't forget the average worker has 30-40 years of life experience (i.e. Learning) that a robot would need to somehow replicate. I'm not saying these problems won't eventually be solved, but AI tech has some tools that are really useful right now, but most people don't know how to use them. Instead of trying to skip up the ladder from step 4 to step 8, let's figure out ways to introduce step 4 to more people, and then we'll have more brains trying to solve the problems at steps 5, 6, and 7 to help us get to 8. Everyone will also make more money along the way :-)
