Familiar Futures: The AI You’ve Been Using Without Even Knowing It
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is becoming more commonplace in our everyday life. What you may not know, though, is that AI is not a baby. We’ve been kind of inundated with AI news for a little over a year, but you were probably introduced to it a long time ago. If you played Pac-Man or Space Invaders, you experienced AI. Also, do you remember Clippy, the Microsoft Office Assistant? Yup, AI. Although the groundwork for today’s AI was laid in the 1950’s, it wasn’t in tools or toys that everyday people would have used. But it got the ball rolling, and today, AI has been seamlessly integrated into several aspects of technology, often without us realizing it.
Early 2000’s
The first of what we might call “modern” AI implementations are the predictive text and autocorrect functions on mobile devices and email platforms. SwiftKey was one example of these, and I never used it myself because I didn’t get a mobile device capable of that use until many years later. We can say, however, that SwiftKey is the precursor to today’s autocorrect and predictive text, and if you use a smartphone, it’s available on your phone, whether you use it or not.
Mid 2000’s
As Netflix and Amazon rolled out their video-on-demand services, these products learned what you like and began suggesting personalized content and products based on what you watched before.
2005
Google Maps revolutionized travel with real-time directions and traffic updates. This was a great improvement over the product I used before, Microsoft Streets and Trips, which, to its credit, was really pretty cool. Streets and Trips, though, was a PC program, and it had to be installed on a computer. It also had a one-inch-square little GPS device that connected to the computer via USB, and the device rested on the dashboard of the vehicle. The GPS device put the car’s location onto the Streets and Trips map, and provided routing directions, but not turn-by-turn. Also, it required a passenger to read the directions from the laptop. Google Maps and Apple Maps provide audible directions, and they also learn where road construction is happening, which roads are toll roads, and other useful stuff.
Late 2000’s
Zendesk is one of the first and topmost chatbot providers, offering virtual customer support. Typing into a field and having someone – or something – on the other end help you solve a problem. Now, nearly every medium and large retailer offers something like it, not to mention service providers like banks and utilities. Many educational institutions are implementing them as well. I know it’s not the same as talking to a real person, and there are times when I need a real person to hear me and let me vent or cry, but most of my problems can be solved by a chatbot.
2011 and 2014
First Siri came to the iPhone in 2011, and she’s learned a lot since then (well, mine is a “he”). The first iterations were pretty bad, but through the years, Siri has become pretty useful. After a car accident when I went back to work, I was still walking with a cane, which left me only one hand to navigate the stairs and carry my stuff. Being able to invoke Siri to send a text, initiate a phone call, send an email, or make a calendar appointment came in pretty handy.
Alexa was introduced in 2014, and Alexa had the advantage of being able to learn from all the problems it took to bring out Siri. Both Siri and Alexa require being in Listening mode in order to hear the “wake word,” and that may be disconcerting for some users, but that’s how this technology works. There is an alternative method for both, by turn off the “wake word” and requiring a physical intervention like a button push to invoke the tool. I don’t use Alexa for much, but it’s nice to be able to turn on and off the porch lights with my phone or with my voice, and Alexa makes a really good alarm clock, one that I don’t have to wind. A power outage will affect it like it will any electric device, but when the power comes back on, Alexa connects back to the internet and resets her own time, and she remembers what time to wake me up without me having to reset it.
2017
You can use your face now to unlock your phone, and there are other devices now that your face can unlock. It’s unfortunate that it is also being used improperly to attempt to identify people in public venues and retail locations, and what makes it unfortunate is that in those applications, it’s been proven to be inaccurate at identifying people with non-white facial skin. Because it must “learn,” using it in that manner can cause and has caused problems for innocent people.
It’s here to stay
Regardless of how you feel about AI, it’s part of your life whether you directly use it or not. It will be used appropriately and inappropriately, for good and bad, to benefit and harm mankind. The best thing we can do now is understand it and learn where it is. There is enough good that AI is facilitating that we need to not “throw the baby out with the bath water” by deciding that we should outlaw all of it, as I’ve heard some people suggest.
Here are a few links you might check out if you want to read a little more about it.