Impact of Artifical Intelligence (AI)-China takes lead in Asia

Pakistan’s place in Artificial Intelligence and computing 
The President of Pakistan
January 20,2019

The committee agreed that efforts should be made to deepen reform and innovation, optimize the institutional environment and boost the innovation vitality of enterprises. Handout.

China pushes integration of AI and real economy

Nation urged to explore ways to transform research into applications and establish a smart economy

#newsai ________________________________________
OF IMPACT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE...
By:  Dr. Manhood Ul Haq

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has affected many professions and this is also true for human resources (HR), so one should stay updated and be prepared to rise in one's profession. Here are three areas to impact the most by AI:

1. TALENT ACQUISITION AND RECRUITMENT: A recent survey published in FORBES indicates that globally over 46% talent acquisition professionals use AI to automate their recruiting processes and 51% are confident they will do;

2. EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: An important role of HR is to stay in touch with employees on regular basis, answer their queries about HR, organizational and allied entrepreneurial matters and keep them engaged;

3. LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT: AI tools are playing a critical role in assessing the learning and development needs of the employees. These tools can interpret and analyze data based on job descriptions, employee profiles, employee objectives and performance in order to determine the skills employees need to acquire in the near future. They also help develop a deep understanding of employee behaviour, thereby engaging organizations to create relevant content which is adaptive, responsive and can accelerate employees rise to the higher grades. Furthermore, AI has the ability to analyze large amounts of real-time data and automatically create personalyzed learning plans.
____________________________________________

In the world of science and technology, it is being said that we are at the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The first that lasted from 1760 to 1840 brought in the age of mechanized production. It was the result of new materials like iron and steel, which combined with new energy resources of coal and steam, led to ‘mass production’, and a factory system with division of labor.

The second industrial revolution from 1870 to the early part of 20th century was the result of electricity, and the internal combustion engine. Both powered industrial machines and made transport possible. Besides this for the first time, communication of messages by telephone and telegraph did not involve physical movement of messengers. Raw human physical labour yielded to machines, while ideas started moving very fast in the ether surrounding us. Mass production led to huge gains and opened the way for individualised mass consumption of today.

The third revolution that followed 60 years later was the digital revolution of information technology and most of you who read these lines have seen it happen. It was brought in by semiconductors, mainframe computing, silicon, personal computing, cellphones and the internet. The world wide web, sensors and cameras, combined with increasing ability to acquire and store data in the last two decades, has led to an exponential increase in data itself which has left the ability to analyse it, phenomenally mismatched and far behind.

The fourth industrial revolution has now begun, and Pakistan must step in to take part in shaping this change to benefit from the fruits the world has yet to see. The ability of technology to crunch data and then to extract valuable information from billions of inputs in a matter of milliseconds has been improving exponentially since the last few decades. It is marked by emerging technology breakthroughs primarily in the following ten areas, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Internet of Things, 5G Broadband, 3D printing, Autonomous Vehicles, Cloud Computing, Blockchain like Distributed Ledgers Technology, Biotechnology and Precision Medicine, and Augmented Reality.

Klaus Schwab in his book ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’ states that previous industrial revolutions liberated man from animal power, made mass production possible and brought digital capabilities to billions of people, but the fourth is fundamentally different. It is characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human.

Reasoning has been the biggest strength of humankind but now it can be relegated to machines, to potentially be performed at a magnitude that could not have been imagined before. Raw, brute crunching of data was done earlier by super computers like the IBM Deep Blue, that defeated Gary Kasporov in 1997. Deep Blue was tutored in the basics of chess and had in its memory the strategy employed by grandmasters in thousands of games previously played. It could evaluate 200 million positions every second and had a significant advantage over its human combatant in that it was accurate, tireless, and remembered millions of calculations while considering its future moves.

Now, this year, comes along a machine learning program, AlphaZero made by Alphabet, that has a unique Algorithm, the latter term being a latinisation of the name of Al-Khwarizmi who also authored the science of ‘Algebra’. AlphaZero’s algorithm for learning of chess, started with no knowledge of the game beyond it basic rules, the way a human would start, but then it played against itself millions of times and learned from its mistakes. Confoundingly in a matter of hours it taught itself enough to take on the best computational beast in chess that existed, the program called ‘Stockfish’. AlphaZero thought smarter not faster. While Stockfish was using brute computational force to calculate chess moves with 60 million calculations per second, AlphaZero with its self-learning algorithms examined only 60,000 calculations per second and beat Stockfish hollow. In a nutshell this is Artificial Intelligence and machine learning. While we register this, consider it to be stone age compared to ‘quantum’ computing, that may soon become a reality.

The convergence of data with massive storage and analytical abilities when applied to available genomic and health data will be creating phenomenal change in human health. ‘Epic’ for example, a US health service provider, has trillions of health data-points on more than 100 million people. The analysis of such meta-data can exponentially improve diagnostics, treatment, and even prediction of disease that may emerge in a population. An AI-based machine at Manchester University has discovered a compound effective against drug-resistant malaria. ReLeaSE another algorithm-based computer program comprises two neural networks that can be thought of as a teacher and a student. The teacher neural network knows the rules behind chemical structures of about 1.7 million known biologically active molecules. By working with the teacher, the student neural network learns over time and becomes better at proposing molecules that are likely to be useful in new drugs. Combining CRISPR the gene sequencing and editing technology with AI drug development programs can dramatically revolutionise health care.

New drugs combined with advanced diagnostic tools will lead to effective personalized treatments. Augmented reality and virtual reality will overlay data related information on the real world whether meant for travel, or even in surgery where layers of tissue shall not have to be dissected in search for diseased foci as the surgeon would be able to see the whole thing in three dimensions before dissection. Doctors may be able to implant living cells that will not be targeted by body’s own immune processes, to manufacture effective drugs within the body.

Artificial Intelligence is a dual use technology. Besides commercial applications it also has a major use in the military, in aerial warfare, avionics, smart bombs, weaponized drones, even in disinformation campaigns and cyber security.

Increasingly machines, for example autonomous vehicles are making decisions with little intervention by humans. Some understanding of this new reality, though in its infancy has enabled, seven out of top ten largest companies of 2018, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook, Ali Baba and Tencents to become economic powerhouses of this decade.