Various components of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will enable people in all professions to do their jobs better, augmenting human capabilities within next 10 years, a leading Qatar-based AI expert has said.
“The digital ecosystem will keep developing, fuelled by the pervasive presence of AI components. AI will be used for augmenting our sensorial experiences and mutual interactions. We will have seamless access to a vast amount of diverse multi-media data. AI will support or fully control processes and workflows in all domains,” Gianni Di Caro, associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, told Gulf Times.
Prof Di Caro said that modern AI technologies are having a truly transformational impact on the society. “AI is augmenting our abilities, making us better at what we do. AI components and solutions are widely being integrated in systems and societies to support processes, interactions, and decision-making.”
“In the coming years, making use of AI, doctors will be making more reliable diagnoses and more precise surgeries. Drivers will be driving in a safer environment. Lawyers will let AI find the right laws and cases and check normative compliance of legal documents. Merchants will be able to perfectly tailor their products and stock to the needs of their customers. Financial investors will use AI to process massive historic and contextual data to give solid predictions of future scenarios,” he said.
According to the academic, governments will play a major role in the development of Responsible AI to define forms of governance for the development and use of AI systems to ensure compliance to local ethics and norms.
“Especially at this stage of early development of AI, governments might not have professional experts able to fully tackle and understand the technical challenges of modern AI systems. Therefore, governments shall work in tight co-operation with academy and industry leaders to define operational methodologies, which, for instance, might include conscious or unconscious biases,” he said.
Prof Di Caro advocates that central role of governments is to support the spread of the AI culture in their country with schools and public information channels as essential tools to educate the citizens to an appropriate and responsible use of AI applications.
Regarding the education scenario, Prof Di Caro is of the view that fully interactive digital educational assistants using a variety of multimedia contents will soon populate educational markets as AI applications emphasise personalisation and individualisation.
“AI assistants will adapt to students’ skills and weaknesses. When the AI will be paired with robotic or virtual reality platforms, the experience with the assistant will be fully immersive for the student and will allow exploring many different modalities for teaching. Creating a culture of AI will be a core advantage in forthcoming years, such that it will be necessary to define and implement appropriate curricula, both for students and teachers to prepare the new generations to be both informed users and developers,” he said.
However the expert noted that there are several challenges that can prevent the increased use of AI. "Developing responsible and explainable AI frameworks and systems to boost transparency and trust, ensure compliance to ethical and legal norms, and to remove unwanted biases in behaviours are some of these challenges. Another, long-term grand challenge targets building machines that can co-operate and collaborate seamlessly with humans and can make decisions aligned with changing and complex body of human values, preferences, and moods,” he said.
"The massive energy consumption associated to train AI models and partly to use the applications is another challenge. The environmental impact of AI is significant and cannot be neglected, especially given the climate change," he added.
“The digital ecosystem will keep developing, fuelled by the pervasive presence of AI components. AI will be used for augmenting our sensorial experiences and mutual interactions. We will have seamless access to a vast amount of diverse multi-media data. AI will support or fully control processes and workflows in all domains,” Gianni Di Caro, associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, told Gulf Times.
Prof Di Caro said that modern AI technologies are having a truly transformational impact on the society. “AI is augmenting our abilities, making us better at what we do. AI components and solutions are widely being integrated in systems and societies to support processes, interactions, and decision-making.”
“In the coming years, making use of AI, doctors will be making more reliable diagnoses and more precise surgeries. Drivers will be driving in a safer environment. Lawyers will let AI find the right laws and cases and check normative compliance of legal documents. Merchants will be able to perfectly tailor their products and stock to the needs of their customers. Financial investors will use AI to process massive historic and contextual data to give solid predictions of future scenarios,” he said.
According to the academic, governments will play a major role in the development of Responsible AI to define forms of governance for the development and use of AI systems to ensure compliance to local ethics and norms.
“Especially at this stage of early development of AI, governments might not have professional experts able to fully tackle and understand the technical challenges of modern AI systems. Therefore, governments shall work in tight co-operation with academy and industry leaders to define operational methodologies, which, for instance, might include conscious or unconscious biases,” he said.
Prof Di Caro advocates that central role of governments is to support the spread of the AI culture in their country with schools and public information channels as essential tools to educate the citizens to an appropriate and responsible use of AI applications.
Regarding the education scenario, Prof Di Caro is of the view that fully interactive digital educational assistants using a variety of multimedia contents will soon populate educational markets as AI applications emphasise personalisation and individualisation.
“AI assistants will adapt to students’ skills and weaknesses. When the AI will be paired with robotic or virtual reality platforms, the experience with the assistant will be fully immersive for the student and will allow exploring many different modalities for teaching. Creating a culture of AI will be a core advantage in forthcoming years, such that it will be necessary to define and implement appropriate curricula, both for students and teachers to prepare the new generations to be both informed users and developers,” he said.
However the expert noted that there are several challenges that can prevent the increased use of AI. "Developing responsible and explainable AI frameworks and systems to boost transparency and trust, ensure compliance to ethical and legal norms, and to remove unwanted biases in behaviours are some of these challenges. Another, long-term grand challenge targets building machines that can co-operate and collaborate seamlessly with humans and can make decisions aligned with changing and complex body of human values, preferences, and moods,” he said.
"The massive energy consumption associated to train AI models and partly to use the applications is another challenge. The environmental impact of AI is significant and cannot be neglected, especially given the climate change," he added.
