There are numerous major issues concerning artificial intelligence and the future. I'd like to talk about the conflict between human ingenuity and artificial intelligence. The problem is already on the horizon, and while no one is talking about it much, this is only because we are not paying attention to our surroundings and environment in the information age.
Many people believe that artificial intelligence will never be able to replace humans in certain domains, such as art, storytelling, filmmaking, writing, and innovation. As much as I'd like to reassure you that these beliefs are correct, I can't do so rationally or honestly. In those categories, we can already see the beginnings of AI, and the graffiti (writing) art is on the wall. We already have art made by AI, and some of it is hard to tell apart from art made by humans. In this area, AI has already passed the Turing Test.
We also have AI novelists and songwriting and composing software that is quite good. We've seen the first AI movies, which aren't quite up to human standards yet but are getting there, and consider if you will, the reality that there are very few new genres introduced these days, with most movies being common storylines with only minor genre derivations. The plots are fairly predictable, and good (high-grossing) Hollywood movies, like good writing and good art, follow certain rules. Computers, software, and thus artificial intelligence can be taught rules. AI can also put together combinations that have never been tried before in real time and at a very low cost per new unit made.
As previously stated, most innovation follows rules and frequently employs simple recombination strategies. Furthermore, for those who believe that anyone and everyone teaching innovation today is actually assisting people in learning to be more creative and innovative, it can't be that difficult. And, if the task is simple, it is safe to say that artificial intelligence can easily complete it. It doesn't even take a creative genius to figure out how.
How to Use Artificial Intelligence to Simulate Creativity and Innovation
Simply connect IBM's Watson to a supercomputer and feed it all of the world's information. Then simply tell it to recombine every word or phrase in every language, and then ask Watson what that new phrase could mean. It will return answers as well as the percentage chance that each of those answers is correct for each recombination. Those recombination outputs with high percentage rates, say 75–99%, could be examined using crowd-sourcing with humans knowledgeable in those domains to see if each of the output answers made sense. Using this technique, the AI-innovating Watson could generate tens of millions of viable original ideas in a single day.
Yes, that would be the first low-hanging fruit project, but it would generate more original ideas than Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Richard Feynman combined had in their entire lives. Let's say that number is 10,000 new original thoughts per day or 30,000 total-an incredible number by any standard-but the AI innovator program could come up with a billion new original thoughts by next weekend and keep going until it runs out of things to combine.
Does this imply that AI will rule the world of innovation? Does this imply that AI will eventually replace human intellectuals? Does this imply that innovation consultants will become extinct? Both yes and no. Yes, because it is unavoidable at some point, and no, because this will not happen overnight, and the AI will generate a lot of work as we go, and humans will have to verify all those new concepts. That alone could employ millions of intellectuals and span almost every sector, industry, and intellectual domain. Such a project could last decades, creating millions of jobs for the next 30 years.