Artificial Intelligence

There are three exponential growth leading to AI in IT world: 1) Computational power (represented by Moore’s law), 2) Storage capacity (Kryder’s law), 3) Data transmission (e.g., Butters’ law). Here are some points made regarding AI trend and investment strategy towards it:

  1. Software has gotten more powerful, but the rate of improvement doesn’t seem to be as swift as in hardware, though measuring improvements in software is somewhat impressionistic. The amount of data we collect clearly outstrips our ability to make easy use of it. One way to look at this is to compare increases in computing power (as measured by the density of transistors on a chip) versus the change in productivity.
  2. We certainly don’t have anything approaching a general artificial intelligence. True general artificial intelligence represents the highest form of computing. Whether and when a general artificial intelligence arrives is less critical for the near future than whether we are able to create machines that can replicate components of human intelligence – as we are now doing reasonably well with voice recognition and hopefully will be able to do with visual pattern recognition. At a higher level, machine learning also represents another compelling opportunity, with the potential to create everything from more intelligent game AIs to Watson.
  3. At the least grandiose level, we need analytical software much more powerful and much easier to use than the current state of the art. Most analytical platforms are exceedingly arcane, requiring lengthy experience with that exact platform to acquire mastery, and yet the quality of analysis remains fairly poor.
  4. Robotics represents another area of underachievement. Industrial robots can be very good at what they do (welding car parts, e.g.), but are extremely expensive and of limited versatility.
  5. While we have the computational power to support many versions of AI, the field remains relatively poorly funded, a surprising result given that the development of powerful AIs (even if they aren’t general AIs) would probably be one of the most important and lucrative technological advances in history.

Article on AI

Aristo wrote an article entititled "Indonesia's Catch-up Growth and The Next Great Leveller" that appeared on Jakarta Globe. Click here to read in the Jakarta Globe website. Below is the screenshot version.