To date, advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have enabled AI-based programs to achieve super-human performance in a variety of games. For instance, IBM’s Watson trounced human competitors on Jeopardy!, and in the areas of chess, go, and pong, experts now consider it impossible for any human ever to beat any of these expert AI players. While these advancements are impressive, the AI robot uprising has not occurred—yet. However, it is coming. From cancer diagnostics to driverless automobiles, AI is advancing across multiple industries. Following are some trends to watch for 2019.
GPU Technology
New graphics technology is not imbued with artificial intelligence; instead, the new generation of graphic processing units (GPUs) are optimized to better handle the heavy loads of data crunching required by AI. Due to the heavy demands on central processing units (CPUs) and the inability for most CPU-powered computers to adequately meet the graphics needs of most games, independent graphics cards were developed. It soon became clear that graphics card technology could be applied to other data-intensive applications, and to date, GPUs have allowed unprecedented advancements for gaming, animation, and CAD applications. Such companies as Nvidia and Intel are now designing GPUs made specifically to power artificial intelligence. These GPU chips will power AI in the healthcare, automobile, and natural-language processing industries.
ONNX Framework Standardization
Currently, AI trained and developed on one type of platform cannot easily be ported, used, and developed on another platform. Consequently, AI applications are isolated in their own specialties. This limitation, however, is about to change.
Facebook and Microsoft, for instance, have teamed to develop a standardized framework called Open Neural Network Exchange that allows AI systems to be developed then used on various, different systems. This network exchange will enable developers to have a much more effective pipeline to develop and distribute AI applications.
Dueling AI
The most significant advancement in AI technology does not involve applications that make use of it. Instead, the advancement to watch for 2019 is the technology that increases an AI’s intelligence. The newest technology responsible for making AI smart is called dueling AI.
Dueling AI, otherwise known as general adversarial networks (GANs), involves one AI solving a problem and another AI attempting to find flaws in it. The initial AI then creates another improved version, and this version is then instantly examined for flaws. This process continues until neither AI can find flaws in the solution.
In general, dueling AI technology has proven successful in real-world generation applications. Specifically, it is used in image generation. For instance, dueling it out with another AI, one AI has created a painting that the other AI cannot distinguish from a human-made painting. Additional AI applications dueling their way to perfection include AI poets and musicians.
Final food for thought might be this–current AI technology has already created super-human game masters. Considering new GPU hardware technology along with broader network accessibility combined with AI-driven technology that makes AI more intelligent—the moment AI becomes more intelligent than humans might not happen in 2019, but the 2019 trends are contributing to that moment, which might not actually be that far away.