The Future of Innovation
There are many major problems with artificial intelligence and the future. I’d like to discuss the clash between human innovation and
artificial intelligence. The problem is already on the horizon, and although no one is really talking about it much, that’s only because we are
not paying attention to our surroundings and environment here in the information age.
Many will tell you artificial intelligence will never replace humans in certain domains such those things that involve creativity – categories
like; art, storytelling, movie-making, writing, and innovation. As much as I’d like to reassure you that these notions are true, I can’t
rationally or honestly tell you they are. We already see the beginnings of AI in those categories, and the graffiti (writing) art is on the wall.
We already have AI art, and some of it is indistinguishable from pieces done by humans, AI has passed the Turing Test in that domain
already.
We also have AI novel writers, and song writing and composing software, and it’s also pretty good. We have seen the first AI movies too, no
not up to human standards quite yet, but certainly getting there, and consider if you will the reality that there are very few new genres
introduced these days, most movies are common storylines with only slight derivations in genre. The plots are pretty predictable and good
(high grossing) Hollywood movies follow certain rules, just as good writing and good art. Rules can be taught to computers, software, and
thus, artificial intelligence. AI can also mix-and-match previously untried combinations and do so in real-time and at a very low cost per new
unit produced.
As, I have stated before most innovation also follows rules, and often uses easy to follow strategies of re-combination. Further, for those
who believe anyone and everyone teaching innovation today are actually helping people learn to be more creative and innovative, then
obviously, it can’t be that hard to do. And, if it is an easy task, then it’s safe to say that Artificial Intelligence can easily conquer it. In fact, it
doesn’t take a creative genius to figure out how.
How to Mimic Creativity and Innovation with Artificial Intelligence
All you’d have to do is take IBM’s Watson, hook it to a super computer and feed it all the world’s information. Then merely instruct it to re-
combine every word or phrase in every language, then ask Watson what that new phrase might mean. It will come back with answers and
the percentage of probability that each of those answers is correct for each re-combination. Those re-combinations outputs with high
percentage rates, let’s say 75-99% could be looked at through crowd-sourcing with humans knowledgeable in those domains to see if each
of the output answers made any sense. Using this technique the AI Innovating Watson could come up with 10’s of millions of viable original
thoughts in one day.
Yes, that would be the first low-hanging fruit project, but that single effort would create more original thoughts than Leonardo da Vinci,
Benjamin Franklin, and Richard Feynman combined than they had come up with in their entire lifetimes. Let’s say that number is 10,000
new original thoughts per each gentleman or 30,000 total – an incredible number by any standard, but the AI using a super computer and
all the world’s recorded knowledge and information – the AI innovator program could come up with a billion new original thoughts by next
weekend and it could keep that going until it ran out of things to combine.
Does this mean that AI will be the master of innovation? Does this mean AI will replace human intellectuals? Does this mean that innovation
consultants will become a thing of the past? Yes and no. Yes, because it’s inevitable eventually and no, because this won’t happen
overnight, and the AI will create 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 would span almost every sector, industry and intellectual domain. Such a project could last decades – and
provide the need for millions of jobs for 30+ years
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