Anees Merchant

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2010: The decade of AI birth, 2020: The decade of AI Maturity

Last decade can be touted as the “Birth of AI”

  • 36M+ results on Google on Artificial Intelligence

  • 300+ books on Amazon

  • 11M+ scholar search results on Google Scholar search

  • 4k+ courses on Coursera.org and Udemy.com

  • Hollywood movies (Her, Iron Man and the series of Avengers, El Machina, etc.) and many more short series on subscription platforms.

  • Interest over time increased from 36 to 88 - from Google Trends

  • ~811k results on LinkedIn People Search with Artificial Intelligence term

The stats are staggering and continue to grow, overwhelm and leave each one of us wondering where would this lead to. The growth in AI (Artificial Intelligence) and its applications has given birth to many companies, conferences, academia, government, and organization led socio-political-economic initiatives, universities introducing MDPs, graduate and post-graduate programs to enable current and future students to be better equipped to manage this tsunami.

In the last 10 years, watching and being part of the industry, it feels like the industry has seen birth and growth of new kid on the block - “AI”. It almost feels like the birth of a new species which brings in opportunities and raises concerns across the various groups involved. The initial applications, actual deployments, and semi-success have instilled confidence in the possibilities this stream of technology can have on humans’ socio, political and economic growth.

The decade has also raised legitimate concerns on the applications of AI as well due to misuse or inappropriate usage. Concerns like

  1. Deep Fake

  2. Cambridge Analytica

  3. Data Privacy

  4. Technology mimicking or displacing humans

The industry has recognized such fears and incidents, and steps initiated to be put in place by authorities in power to ensure no further misuse of technology or misappropriation of facts. GDPR, PDP, CCPA are some of the data protection norms being instilled by the government and other authorities to protect consumer rights.

But the most interesting fact in the last decade has been a heightened awareness by most of the consumer groups across developed and emerging markets, which makes the AI as a center point of discussions. Today most of the AI applications have become so inconspicuous that a naked eye or an ordinary consumer that most of the apps go undetected.

The new decade is going to transform how applications of AI would be leveraged in our day to day life either personally or professionally. As technology and screens have become synonym to our day to day life, similarly, applications of AI would be seen across the human touchpoints. Here is my top 10 wishlist for AI applications for the new decade:

  1. Natural calamities and global warming

  2. Conversation and enhancement of natural resources and species

  3. Education and skilling of global citizens

  4. Personalized Medicine and Care

  5. Personalized Travel and Hospitality needs

  6. Ease of doing business or interactions with local/global government institutions

  7. DIY products and services

  8. Increased robots amongst humans

  9. Better technology and data governance

  10. Enhanced and Choice to the everyday consumer on how applications AI, technology and data usage

This is my personal perspective on how applications of AI would evolve in the new decade if you have an interesting 11 and 12 or more would like to hear about them. Chao..