Ren Wu’s blog

Ongoing Evolution of AI

The holidays are a time to reflect on the past year and think about what lies ahead in the new year. In 2018, AI continued to get a lot of attention in the public eye. There was the usual hype, but there was also good media coverage of the industry’s challenges and progress. It is always good to remind ourselves that AI, like other technologies, evolves continuously. Hard-working researchers and innovators will continue to advance the state of the art, but the advancements tend to result in evolutionary – not revolutionary – change. It seemed like there was less “rise of the robots” or “the Singularity is near” hype in the past year. Perhaps there is more understanding of the complexities of AI, and an appreciation that the dream of “artificial general intelligence” is extremely distant. Perhaps some of the visible setbacks in autonomous vehicle projects helped illustrate the complexities of AI. On the bright side, we have continued to see growth in a broad range of useful AI applications. If you missed the report from McKinsey Global Institute this past year that cataloged AI use cases across 19 industries, I highly recommend that you read it. This paper covered…More DetailsOngoing Evolution of AI