How to Profit and Protect Yourself from Artificial Intelligence

Timothy J Smith

• Publisher: Twenty-two Twenty-eight
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780999101032
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Automation in Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The rapidly growing impact of artificial intelligence permeates our lives through multiple channels from the tech giants such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook to the computers controlling our cars, smartphones, and robots on the factory floor. Analysts project massive disruption in employment from this new technology with many jobs being automated in the next twenty years. The era of artificial intelligence is upon us, and the potential for great profits to society, business, and individuals stems from advances in transportation, healthcare, and manufacturing. The potential for profit stands in contrast to the possible dangers to our jobs, privacy, society and more. Don’t stand on the sidelines. Learn the potentials and limitations of this new technology to best position yourself, your family, and your career for profit and protection in the new era of A.I.

Chapter 1

What Is Artificial Intelligence?

There is an old saying that goes something like this—If one has a hammer everything becomes a nail. It seems these days that to artificial intelligence everything is a nail. Artificial Intelligence, or AI, refers to computers that mimic or exceed human capabilities such as decision making, creativity, problem-solving, pattern recognition, purpose, and even consciousness. Nobody makes it through a single day without at least once hearing the words computer, artificial intelligence, or robot. We are surrounded by computers almost everywhere we go these days. People use desktop computers, smartphones, laptops, and tablets at home and at work. Moreover, you will find computers in your car that manage many functions like optimizing engine function, operating anti-lock brakes, and even running the backup camera and bumper sensors. New smart televisions contain a computer to run the screen and manage the multiple inputs of information, including the internet and multiple video streaming sources. To help understand how to profit and protect yourself from artificial intelligence, it is crucial to know what artificial intelligence is and how it works. Before getting to artificial intelligence, it is essential to understand what a computer is, because it forms the basis of artificial intelligence. In the process of understanding what artificial intelligence is and what it is not, we will see that some things are good nails, but not everything is a nail.

What is a computer?

At its most basic level, a computer is a machine that takes in information, performs some operations on that information according to some instructions, and produces new information. The abacus, a simple frame with colored wooden beads on parallel rods, provides an example of a very simple computer. It is a mechanical device invented thousands of years ago that remains in use today. In skilled hands, the abacus can be used to perform various calculations such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication. The beads are stacked up to represent a number. In other words, five beads equal the number five. Using the different columns of beads, large numbers can be added, subtracted, or even multiplied. The slide rule provides another great example of a mechanical calculator. Although replaced now by the electronic calculator, the slide rule since its invention in the 1600s had been an invaluable tool in engineering and mathematics. The slide rule, as the name implies, looks like a stack of different rulers marked in different scales that can be slid back and forth, and a sliding window with a thin vertical line running through it to see the results of the calculation. An accomplished slide rule operator was able to use this device to perform rapid calculations such as multiplication, division, exponentials, and square roots.

Computers today fall into two different classes—analog and digital. Analog computers use continuously changing physical properties such as metal gears, pressure, or electricity to represent numbers and do calculations. The slide rule is a very simple example of an analog computer. The different rulers made of wood or metal sliding back and forth do the calculations. Although not a computer, a good way to think of analog is to think of an old vinyl record. The music information is stored in the cut grooves of the record. When the record is first cut, music vibrates a cutter needle that cuts a groove in a blank record. High frequencies make the needle vibrate back and forth very quickly, and low frequencies move the needle back and forth more slowly. To play the music back on a record, a needle has to move through the groove of a spinning record. Moving through the groove, the needle vibrates just as the cutter vibrated when the record was first made. The music is faithfully reproduced simply by the needle tracking through the bumps in the record grooves. Much more sophisticated analog computers have been developed such as the famous Norden Bomb Sight, which was used extensively by the US Army Air Force during World War II and the Korean Conflict. Using gyroscopes, optics, and mechanical calculations to take into account altitude, wind speed, humidity, and more, the bombsight would calculate when and at which point to drop bombs to hit the sighted target, take control of the aircraft with an autopilot, and drop the bombs at the correct time, “…the mechanical wizard [Norden Bombsight] orders other robots to fly the plane to the right place and drop a bomb at the right time to place it just on the target.”1 The Norden Bombsight represents an engineering marvel and the complexity of tasks analog computing can handle; however, analog computers are built to solve certain questions but lack the flexibility to perform multiple tasks.

The mechanical cash register, which is an analog computer that was once common in every store in the country, has since been replaced by digital electrical cash registers. The digital cash register is only one example of the many types of digital computers in use today. A digital computer is a device that takes in information or data, does some calculations according to a program, and returns the results. Unlike the analog computer that relies on physical properties like gears or marks on a ruler, digital computers use symbols to do their calculations. A digital computer uses binary code to represent numbers and letters. Binary code is a very ingenious way that things like numbers and letters can be represented in a machine. Instead of representing the number ‘5’ as an analog number on a slide rule, the digital representation of the number ‘5’ is a two-symbol or binary system is in the form of a series of eight 0s and 1s. Here are some examples of binary code:

Character	Binary Code
5	00110101
A	01000001
&	00100110

In binary code, each number from 0-9, each letter of the alphabet, and many symbols such as ‘&’ and ‘%’ have a unique binary code of eight 0s and 1s. The basic binary code needed to represent a number or character is called a byte, which is short for the term binary. Another kind of binary code is Morse Code. Although only experienced by most people through old movies, Morse Code uses a series of dots and dashes or short and long beeps to represent letters and numbers. For example, in Morse Code ‘S’ is ‘…’ and the letter ‘O’ is represented by ‘---’. The famous mayday distress signal used by ships in trouble is the Morse Code SOS. SOS is sent as ‘…---…’ Digital computers use binary representations of numbers, letters, and symbols to perform logic and calculations to accomplish everything from word processing to modeling weather patterns.

Digital electronic computing is relatively new. The first digital computer was built in 1939. “Beginning in 1935, John Vincent Atanasoff, a physics professor at Iowa State College, pioneered digital electronics for calculating.”2 In collaboration with his graduate student Clifford Berry, Atanasoff built a prototype of the world’s first digital computer. They named it ABC for the Atanasoff Berry Computer. Digital computing truly emerged just after World War II. The world’s first large-scale, general purpose digital computer was built at the University of Pennsylvania and completed on Valentine’s Day 1946. Known as ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, this computer commissioned by the US Army to do ballistics calculations ushered in the modern era of large computing systems. To help put it in perspective, ENIAC was massive—weighing 30 tons (more than two city buses) and measuring 60 feet in length. By comparison, the average smartphone in everyone’s pocket weighs about 4 ounces and measures 5 inches or so in length, making the smartphone 240,000 times lighter and 144 times shorter than ENIAC.3 More incredibly, the computer inside the modern cellphone boasts over a thousand times more computing power than ENIAC. After ENIAC, the digital computer came to dominate computing and continues to this day.

How does a digital computer work?

To appreciate the possibilities and limitations of artificial intelligence, it is important to know basically how a digital computer works. At its simplest level, a computer is an electronic machine that takes in information, places that information in memory, performs calculations, and then outputs new information. The input information can come from typin...