In this discussion board, we will talk about machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) as an emerging technology and the trend we will continue to see further adoption in the next four to five years. Machine learning is defined as a computing algorithm that takes a huge amount of data and learns from this data to make behavior predictions. This data can be the experiences and knowledge that human shares on a daily basis. Applications of machine learning can be seen from self-driving cars, speech and text recognition, and semantic applications. In China, huge volumes of data being collected from approximately 700 million internet users can be a perfect gate toward a huge potential in the AI field. For example, the government can use machine learning to predict the pollution levels and formulate policies accordingly that can affect health and climate in the country (Knight, 2016). Not only the machine learning that is seen as an emerging field but the whole industry that involves with AI like robotics, which is estimated to be $135 billion industry in 2019 (Vanian, 2016).
The two driving forces that have made machine learning and AI became available in today’s application are the increase of computing power and digital data boom. In fact, AI has existed for more than 60 years, but because of the computing power that we have today allowing the engineers to build a high-functioning system with the right hardware and infrastructure to support AI systems. With faster computers, a large volume of data can be processed and perform at a higher caliber. For example, Google introduced the TPU (tensor processing units that is believed to perform 15 times faster than a normal GPU. Secondly, the data is increasing at an exponential rate and keep accumulating every day through many channels like social media. As big data continue to grow, more advanced processing application of the data is being created every day so that we can have an increasing number of sensor, systems, and device to transmit this data. The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimated that we will have 163 zettabytes (a trillion gigabytes) of data in 2025 (“The 3 forces that brought AI to life,” 2017).
Reference:
Horizon Report for Higher Education. (2018). Retrieved from http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2017-nmc-technology-outlook-for-chinese-higher-education-EN.pdf
Knight, W. (2016, March 28). Can machine learning help lift China’s smog? Retrieved from https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600993/can-machine-learning-help-lift-chinas-smog/
The 3 Forces that Brought AI to Life (And Why it’s Only Now Changing the World). (2017, December 15). Retrieved from https://blog.cloudfactory.com/3-forces-brought-ai-to-life
Vanian, J. (2016, February 24). The multi-billion dollar robotics market is about to boom. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2016/02/24/robotics-market-multi-billion-boom/
Futuring of AI 