AI Predictions for 2019: Part 2

Last week, we published a piece on Forbes’ AI predictions for 2019, including our opinion on them. Because today they published a larger piece with even more predictions, we decided to pen a reaction piece on the subject.

While both posts focused on the opinions of various firms in the AI space, the second one was different for a key reason.

This time, Forbes made 120 predictions about what will happen in the AI industry in 2019. If that seems over the top, it’s likely because it is. One could make a fairly strong argument that they deliberately did this to draw in more readers to their post with its’ sheer length. Perhaps people who choose this particular article are hoping to gain some special insight into where AI is going and see this as a trustworthy database of the possibilities.

Whatever the case, the post is long and amounts to 120 quotes that do not really flow well together. Even so, this does not mean that we can’t get any valuable insights from their effort. In our last piece, we spent a considerable amount of time going into each prediction, because there was only a handful to mention. This time, due to the sheer length of this piece, we’ll stick to what may be considered the most unique examples.

First and foremost, there’s the idea that 2019 will truly be the year of the autonomous vehicle. According to Boaz Mizrahi of Tactile Mobility, we will see major advances in this field due to data-sharing alliances. In essence, this idea seems to be synonymous with car companies sharing data about road conditions in order to advance as a group, instead of individually. The key weakness with this prediction however, might be that an individual company will truly figure out how to maximize its’ data sets for its’ AVs, without the help of other companies.

Later on in the piece, a firm called Taranis, which studies crops with neural networks to prevent crop losses, makes a statement that might be even more striking than our first example. According to their CEO, Ofir Schlam, next year, farms will start to hire AIs, in place of humans, due to the fact that farming is not really seen as a profitable profession anymore. While Schlam says this is simply “filling a labor gap,” others who find themselves without employment might beg to differ in the end.

Finally, for our purposes, the idea of AIs being judged on their level of humanity is brought to light in a very specific fashion. Rana el Kaliouby, the founder of an AI firm called Affectiva, predicted that as the trust in AIs continues to grow, our judgment of them will shift to a more balanced consideration of their IQ, together with their level of emotional intelligence. In connection with this, in the next prediction, which was made by a firm called Pegasystems, takes things a step further. According to them, 2019 will be the year of empathy in AIs. With this, we can also assume that Pegasystems believes that research areas like affective computing will truly take hold as well. If you don’t remember what we’re referring to here, just think about the combination of research from psychology, neuroscience, and computer science that aims to find the path to humanizing AIs. By all accounts, getting even close to that will require a massive amount of work. More specifically, AI teams will have to establish some semblance of a framework that communicates emotion in code.

If doing that sounds like fantasy, you’re surely not alone in thinking in such a way. Even so, in analyzing firms like Affectiva, we may come closer to understanding how such research logically works out. Because of this, stay tuned for a future post on just that. Until then, check out some of our resources below and keep in mind that there are 117 more predictions that we have not covered here.