We had the industrial age. Then we had the atomic age. Then came the space age. Finally, we got the digital age. But what comes next?
According to some of the biggest companies in the world, it’s the age of artificial intelligence. And some are predicting that it will eclipse all other ages combined. Elon Musk, the man behind SpaceX, has said that artificial intelligence could be like “summoning the demon.” Stephen Hawking has claimed that AI is the greatest existential threat that we face.
But most of the world’s biggest companies aren’t deterred. In fact, they understand that artificial intelligence is the future and that the potential for making money using the technology is enormous.
Microsoft
Microsoft, like so many other large companies in Silicon Valley, is eating up as many AI startups as it can get its hands on. Now the company has launched a new fund for AI startups in the hopes that it will be able to nurture one that will ultimately allow the company to make AI breakthroughs.
They’re also investing heavily in big data and the cloud, two enabling technologies that will allow artificial intelligence to become more sophisticated. If you click here, you’ll see that there are already companies trying to use big data to predict where the next security threat is going to come from and protect business networks. But Microsoft wants to take machine learning to the next level, providing even more sophisticated services that will help stem the tide of security breaches at private companies.
Uber
Can Uber be called a startup anymore? Probably not, given that the service has not expanded to over forty countries and that the firm has an estimated value of nearly $100 billion. Uber has long said that it is interested in artificial intelligence. It wants systems that will be able to drive its passengers around without the need for a human driver. While the effects on employment could be bad in the short term, Uber hopes that over the long term, prices for getting a taxi ride across town will go down.
Recently, Uber acquired Geometric Intelligence, an AI startup that hopes to redefine the concept of machine learning. They want to help cars to actually “see” like people do, interpreting what to do next from the world around them. Because cameras are much cheaper than things like radar, they’re likely to accelerate the adoption of self-driving technology. This is why Uber is working so hard to get the technology working.
Is Google a search company, or is it an AI company? Many people are arguing that it is now the latter, thanks to the fact that it’s search engine is now almost entirely dependent on different forms of artificial intelligence.
Google has bought its own AI startup too, like many other companies in the Valley. The company it bought is called DeepMind, and already, DeepMind has made several significant breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, like beating the world champion at Go and even developing AIs with memories.
