Everything that is currently sold as Artificial Intelligence is in fact, statistics. Sure, it’s a very advanced (and capable!) form of statistics called Big Data^, but still, it’s just statistics. Machine Learning is entirely human-written algorithms that chew data.
The so called “AI” is, unfortunately for us, not intelligent at all^ – and I say unfortunately not because I know AI won’t be hostile towards us (at least not by intent^), but rather because the current form of “AI” is defined and shaped by the hands of humans, who are experts at wiping each other out.
In any case, Machine Learning is powerful.
Electricity costs is one example of how corporations get an edge over each other using Machine Learning:
This is, of course, a nice win for Google. Now let’s see when the technology will make life better for the rest of the planet, not only for the corporation’s shareholders (and partners).
Another clever use of Machine Learning is materials research:
https://phys.org/news/2018-10-algorithm-quickly-materials.amp^
Of course, ML is also becoming instrumental in medicine. That’s one of the most interesting fields for ML since there’s heaps of interesting data just lying to be put to (hopefully) good use:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-019-0360-1^
But all this is still using good old transistors. And transistors might soon look like a horse & carriage compared to what quantum computers will be capable of (even though the two will no doubt have synergies fueling their co-existence for a while):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing^
Here’s a nice summary covering a lot of things surrounding the upcoming quantum computing revolution:
https://towardsdatascience.com/quantum-computing-and-ai-789fc9c28c5b^
Sure, quantum computers won’t immediately be used to run Crysis^, but they are clearly set to allow an even greater leap in computational power than the one we already experienced during the past 66 years of transistor-based computation^.
And it’s not just about computational power, but also security & speed. Here’s an article about quantum communication:
https://singularityhub.com/2018/12/26/quantum-communication-just-took-a-great-leap-forward/^
The race for quantum supremacy is on. For updates, follow this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_supremacy^
So what will happen when we reach, and then dive deep into quantum supremacy and bring all our Big Data tech to that depth? I once read an article that said “A.I. still needs us — to build quantum computers”. Here, I found it:
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3056812/ai-still-needs-us-to-build-quantum-computers.html^
And here’s a bonus article: a leaked internal Google video shows a creepy vision of how data could be used to direct human decision-making. And keep in mind that this was on Google’s design table already several years ago: