A panel of academic and industrial thinkers has looked ahead to 2030 to forecast how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) might affect future life and how the benefits of AI might be broadly shared.

Their forecasts contained in a report entitled "Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030" looks at the effects of AI in a typical North American city in areas such as transportation, health care and education. The report intends to spur discussion about how to ensure the safe, fair and beneficial development of rapidly emerging AI technologies.

Like Us on Facebook

This year-long exercise in scientific introspection yielded a report meant to spur discussion about 'how the fruits of an AI-dominated economy should be shared.' It's the first product of the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100), an ongoing project hosted by Stanford University to inform societal deliberation and provide guidance on the ethical development of smart software, sensors and machines.

"We believe specialized AI applications will become both increasingly common and more useful by 2030, improving our economy and quality of life," said Peter Stone, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin and chair of the 17-member panel of international experts.

"But this technology will also create profound challenges, affecting jobs and incomes and other issues that we should begin addressing now to ensure that the benefits of AI are broadly shared."

The new report traces its roots to a 2009 study that brought AI scientists together in a process of introspection that became ongoing in 2014 when Eric and Mary Horvitz created the AI100 endowment through Stanford.

AI100 formed a standing committee of scientists and charged this body with commissioning periodic reports on different aspects of AI over the ensuing century. The AI100 standing committee first met in 2015, led by chairwoman and Harvard computer scientist Barbara Grosz.

It sought to convene a panel of scientists with diverse professional and personal backgrounds and enlist their expertise to assess the technological, economic and policy implications of potential AI applications in a societally relevant setting.

"AI technologies can be reliable and broadly beneficial," said Grosz. "Being transparent about their design and deployment challenges will build trust and avert unjustified fear and suspicion."

The report investigates eight domains of human activity in which AI technologies are beginning to affect urban life in ways that will become increasingly pervasive and profound by 2030. Five examine application arenas such as transportation where there is already buzz about self-driving cars.

Three other sections treat technological impacts, like the section on employment and workplace trends, which touches on the likelihood of rapid changes in jobs and incomes.

The eight sections discuss:

Transportation: Autonomous cars, trucks and, possibly, aerial delivery vehicles may alter how we commute, work and shop and create new patterns of life and leisure in cities.

Home/service robots: Like the robotic vacuum cleaners already in some homes, specialized robots will clean and provide security in live/work spaces that will be equipped with sensors and remote controls.

Health care: Devices to monitor personal health and robot-assisted surgery are hints of things to come if AI is developed in ways that gain the trust of doctors, nurses, patients and regulators.

Education: Interactive tutoring systems already help students learn languages, math and other skills. More is possible if technologies like natural language processing platforms develop to augment instruction by humans.

Entertainment: The conjunction of content creation tools, social networks and AI will lead to new ways to gather, organize and deliver media in engaging, personalized and interactive ways.

Low-resource communities: Investments in uplifting technologies like predictive models to prevent lead poisoning or improve food distributions could spread AI benefits to the underserved.

Public safety and security: Cameras, drones and software to analyze crime patterns should use AI in ways that reduce human bias and enhance safety without loss of liberty or dignity.

Employment and workplace: Work should start now on how to help people adapt as the economy undergoes rapid changes as many existing jobs are lost and new ones are created.

Grosz said she hopes the AI 100 report "initiates a century-long conversation about ways AI-enhanced technologies might be shaped to improve life and societies."

TagsArtificial Intelligence, AI, Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030, Stanford University, Peter Stone, Barbara Grosz