The AIians are here

Date of Inspiration: February 14, 2017

“Today is Valentine’s Day. Let me remind you before someone else does” advised Beth Ruyak, the popular host on Capital Public Radio, as I was trying to stay awake at the wheel in wee hours of 5-AM something. I was driving to San Francisco from El Dorado Hills near Sacramento, starting early enough to make it in time for a client meeting at 9 AM. “You are on the fastest route” said la femme Google Maps, reassuring me that all was well on the road ahead. ETA was 8:15 AM. No problem!

As I progressed towards the outskirts of Berkeley, I started to witness East Bay come to life at 7:20 AM. Hundreds of cars started to appear on the road from nowhere. I glanced at my phone. Google Maps displayed red varicose veins of traffic congestion and a new ETA of 8:45 AM! That was cutting too fine for my 9 AM meeting. With my heart beat quickening, I started to think ahead about my contingency plans. ETA was now 8:57 AM!

Little did I realize that Google Maps was also working on contingency plans for me. “Faster route available. you will save 12 minutes”. I took that advice. New ETA – 8:40 AM!! I made it to my meeting 5 minutes early!

The smarts of Google Maps is nothing other than artificial intelligence or AI in action. Whether we realize it or not, so many of our daily man-machine interactions are powered by AI. And we’ve just started to experience AI. The rate of innovation in the combined fields of AI, machine learning, cloud computing, big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) is on an exponential rise.

AI is so intricately and invisibly entwined into our lives that it deserves to be recognized and appreciated. Like a sensitive and caring fellow-human, AI learns our needs and behaviors the more we interact with it. AI is even capable of sensing our moods and cracking a joke to lift us up! AI ingests data like humans ingest information. AI helps avoid accidents, keeps our borders safe and helps surgeons.

Can AI harm? Yes, of course. The adage “garbage in, garbage out” holds true for AI as well. You teach AI to do harm and it will harm! And as its master, you can harm using AI as the weapon.

I think we, as a species, have knowingly or unknowingly created a new intelligent species called “AI” using science, and technology. We, as a society, are helping the AI “species” proliferate at an exponential rate and our digitally-dependent behaviors will very soon assimilate AI deep into our lives. This species may have form as recognized by the human eye, or not which makes it interestingly both earthly and unearthly.

Considering how much we benefit from AI today and how much more we will extract from the AI in the future, I thought I should recognize, understand and respect AI as a fellow-species! I started to wonder what a good name for the AI species could be. I searched for the name “Aiian” (brilliant, eh?) on names.org and this is what I got:

Out of 5,743,017 records in the U.S. Social Security Administration public data, the name “Aiian” was not present. It is possible the name you are searching has less than five occurrences per year. You might want to use a short version of your first name or perhaps your nickname.

On the other hand, you simply have a name that no one else in America is using. For 136 years only your parents have thought of using your name. Hoorah! You are a unique individual.

How fitting! I proclaim that the AIians are here and here to-be!

“Today is Valentine’s Day. Let me remind you before someone else does” – that could one day be a caring AIian assisting me with my relationship on public radio!