5 5 Watson and the Jeopardy! Challenge: www.youtube.com/watch?v=P18EdAKuC1U
6 6 AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft: https://deepmind.com/blog/article/alphastar-mastering-real-time-strategy-game-starcraft-ii
7 7 After 5,000 games, Microsoft’s Suphx AI can defeat top Mahjong: https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/30/after-5000-games-microsofts-suphx-ai-can-defeat-top-mahjong-players/
8 8 AI learns to solve a Rubik’s Cube in 1.2 seconds: www.engadget.com/2019/07/17/ai-rubiks-cube-machine-learning-neural-network/
9 9 Boris Johnson pledges £250m for NHS artificial intelligence, The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/society/2019/aug/08/boris-johnson-pledges-250m-for-nhs-artificial-intelligence
10 10 A comparison of deep learning performance against health-care professionals in detecting diseases from medical imaging, The Lancet: www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(19)30123-2/fulltext
11 11 MIT AI tool can predict breast cancer up to 5 years early, works equally well for white and black patients: https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/mit-ai-tool-can-predict-breast-cancer-up-to-5-years-early-works-equally-well-for-white-and-black-patients/
12 12 Infervision: Using AI and Deep Learning to Diagnose Cancer: www.bernardmarr.com/default.asp?contentID=1269
13 13 The Search Engine AI That Reads Your Books: www.aidaily.co.uk/articles/the-search-engine-ai-that-reads-your-books
14 14 Sony’s new AI drummer could write beats for your band: https://futurism.com/the-byte/sony-ai-drummer-write-beats-your-band
15 15 MIT’s new AI can look at a pizza, and tell you how to make it: https://futurism.com/the-byte/mit-pizza-ai
16 16 Microsoft invests $1 billion in OpenAI to pursue holy grail of artificial intelligence: www.theverge.com/2019/7/22/20703578/microsoft-openai-investment-partnership-1-billion-azure-artificial-general-intelligence-agi
17 17 Facebook faces legal fight over facial recognition: www.bbc.com/news/technology-49291661
18 18 Amazon quietly adds “no human review” option to Alexa settings as voice AIs face privacy scrutiny: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/03/amazon-quietly-adds-no-human-review-option-to-alexa-as-voice-ais-face-privacy-scrutiny/
19 19 The “right to an explanation” under EU data protection law, Medium: https://medium.com/golden-data/what-rights-related-to-automated-decision-making-do-individuals-have-under-eu-data-protection-law-76f70370fcd0
20 20 How Bias Distorts AI, Forbes: www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2019/08/04/bias-the-silent-killer-of-ai-artificial-intelligence/#260abf2e7d87
TREND 2 Internet of Things and the Rise of Smart Devices
The One-Sentence Definition
The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the increasing number of everyday devices and objects that are connected to the internet and are capable of gathering and transmitting data.
What Is the Internet of Things?
The rise of smart devices has played a key role in the massive explosion of data (see Big Data, Trend 4) – and is rapidly changing our world and the way we live in it. But, in the IoT, data is created by things, not people, which has given rise to the term “machine-generated data.” How exactly are machines generating data? Typically, it’s when smart devices, gadgets, or machines gather information and communicate that data via the internet – an example being your fitness tracker automatically sending activity data to an app on your phone. (However, as we’ll see later in this section, in the future, devices will increasingly process the data themselves, without having to transmit it for analysis.)
This is all possible because, these days, pretty much everything is getting smarter. It all started with the iPhone, and has since snowballed to include smart TVs, smart watches, and fitness trackers (see wearables, Trend 3), smart home thermostats, smart fridges, smart industrial machinery…even smart nappies that alert you when your baby has, well, done what babies do best. A huge range of devices, machines, and equipment are now fitted with sensors and have the ability to constantly gather and transmit data. Today, even the smallest devices can effectively function as a computer. (However, it’s important to note that an actual computer wouldn’t count as part of the IoT, since the IoT generally refers to everyday objects that we wouldn’t traditionally expect to be able to connect to the internet – like fridges and TVs.)
An IoT device could be as small as a light bulb – smaller, in some cases – or as large as a streetlamp – see intelligent spaces and smart places, Trend 5 – and may be found at home, on our city streets, in our offices, in healthcare settings, in industrial settings, and more. I delve into some of the practical applications of the IoT later in the chapter.
The ability of machines to connect to and share information with each other is a key part of the IoT. These machine-to-machine conversations mean that devices can talk to each other and potentially decide on a course of action without human intervention. For example, manufacturing