Personal artificial intelligence – The inevitable way of the future?

Artificial intelligence is in its latest fetal cell division before it actually gets born. We are hearing a lot about machine learning, deep learning, neural nets and the usual transient haze of technologies. Not a lot of thought seems to be going into where how and by whom artificial intelligence will be used.

When artificial intelligence becomes freely available on the market, the number of users will equal the number of people on the planet. Artificial intelligence is a learning tool, but it is also a tool from which you can learn.

That seems to be the big weak spot at the moment. Not a lot of learning seems to be being done. When artificial intelligences invented their own language to communicate, the response was that they shouldn’t do that.

Was any analysis of language they created done? If not, why not? The most likely reason for inventing a new language would be for more efficient communication. That’s not important?

We can put things like that down to the usual white coat stupidity, or insularity. The fact is that artificial intelligence is going to be incredibly useful for exactly things like that.

Artificial intelligence can be a great teacher. Custom artificial intelligence, specialised for personal needs, could be a gigantic personal asset. For example – Many people complain about Dr Google and similar online information access. That’s understandable, but the baseline reason for getting this information is pretty simple. People want to know more, and they want to be able to access information for themselves.

One of the symptoms of this situation is blogging. Originally, blogging was about anything and everything, raving, ranting, et cetera. Within a couple of years of starting, blogging became increasingly specialised. This is a type of natural market segmentation, but the difference is that it’s all done on a personal basis.

Meanwhile, technology like Alexa came along. This personal service thing is pretty prevalent. It’s another type of specialisation, creating a personal network of information, services, and the rest of the shopping list.

So when personal artificial intelligence comes along, it’s not too hard to see what will happen. I spend a lot of time researching information in any kind of disorder, from lousy uncommunicative science news to absolutely hopeless, overcomplicated information.

Some people do great science, but they are truly lousy communicators. In my commercial work, I spend a lot of time acting as an interpreter for things like this. I have to communicate technical information to consumers who don’t want to be burdened with technical information. They simply want to know basic things, like what’s good about this, how does it work, why does it work, and similar fundamental, necessary information. This is all done in a commercial context, it’s basically B2B, just using consumer terminology.

The demand for this information is also pretty easy to understand. It’s necessary. This applies to pretty much anything anyone does. If you’re interested in a particular subject, you do not want a complex, disorganised mess as your knowledge base. You don’t need incomprehensible terminology, or endless scrolling trying to find bits of information to put together.

Alexa is another symptom of this search for information. Alexa can find information, but can’t do anything much with it. It certainly can’t interpret it, or put it into usable form. Artificial intelligence can.

So for personal research purposes alone, artificial intelligence is the default choice. There are quite literally endless possible uses here. Take this idea up a couple of notches, and for professionals, personal artificial intelligence would be the indispensable research and knowledge base.

… And these basic functions aren’t even beginning to address what artificial intelligence can actually do. If you have information, and you ask artificial intelligence to extrapolate and prevent based on that information, what happens? That’s the main use for artificial intelligence at the moment, creating algorithms, those infallible, inflexible, nuisances, and other straitjacketed things.

How about gaming? Say you wanted to invent a game. Imagine that. Like every other human being on earth, you want to invent a game. Do you think that artificial intelligence could help?

The game could be worth millions of dollars. You need good testing. You need a virtual audit trail of code, sprites, graphics, and everything else. Do you really want to do all of that yourself? You know how much that would cost? Do you have any idea how messy the intellectual property situation can get when you do things like that?

With personal artificial intelligence, you can do spectacular intellectual property research, bug fixes, mods, variables, expansions, test runs, you name it. And you can do it quickly. That’s one thing current technology cannot do, or do anything like it.

How about writing? Artificial intelligence is so fast and so information-hungry, that you can do practically the same things as you can do for gaming. Not many people think of writing a book as like a game, that when you trip over enough of your own mistakes, proofreading, it is very like a game. It’s a game you need to win, too.

I am not at all impressed with “artificial writing”. It’s okay, in terms of market standard, but it can’t fly. House bricks will learn ballet before artificial writing really knows what it’s doing. I will give artificial intelligence full credit for the ability to learn, but it needs much more and deeper perspectives than it has.

Having said which – As assistance for writing a book, artificial intelligence is exactly what I need. It can do the truly murderous tasks of detail, without inflicting me with a style guide and similar garbage. It could even do what I need to be done now, which is managing the voice to text, and eliminating errors.

For commercial writing, I could use personal artificial intelligence as a fabulous search tool, much more efficient in sourcing information, and far more effective in terms of isolating high-value information. (Searching for commercial information can be unbelievably tedious. The quality of information is often appalling, and the organisation of the information is nothing less than ridiculous.)

Not wishing to hammer the obvious any more than necessary, personal artificial intelligence is going to be essential. Everybody will need it, and everybody will have different uses for it. The world will be full of literally billions of artificial intelligences working for individuals. It’ll make the internet and the Cloud look like a rather quaint bingo game.

For students, personal artificial intelligence will be a form of idiot-proofing. It will be able to check the work, find mistakes, and even do some of the logic. Artificial intelligence should also be able to do some of the teaching, providing useful backup and practical support for actual teachers. You can always have one-on-one time with a machine, and you don’t have to take it personally.

I can see personal artificial intelligence being as common as phones, just a lot more useful. One of the reasons for that surprisingly rosy view is that with artificial intelligence you and everyone else can actually document everything that happens.

You won’t have to rely on selective memories, convenient misinterpretations, or the debatable honesty of whoever you’re dealing with. It’ll be another audit trail, this time all about information, and act as a quality control for information. Sort of blockchain for information management, too.