“If you’re an iPhone user, you’ve come across Apple’s AI, and not just in Siri’s improved acumen in figuring out what you ask of her. You see it when the phone identifies a caller who isn’t in your contact list (but did email you recently). Or when you swipe on your screen to get a short list of the apps that you are most likely to open next. Or when you get a reminder of an appointment that you never got around to putting into your calendar. Or when a map location pops up for the hotel you’ve reserved, before you type it in. Or when the phone points you to where you parked your car, even though you never asked it to. These are all techniques either made possible or greatly enhanced by Apple’s adoption of deep learning and neural nets.

“Yes, there is an ‘Apple brain’ – it’s already inside your iPhone.””

AI Is Not the Future, It's the Present
https://letstalkpayments.com/ai-is-not-the-future-its-the-present/
via Instapaper

“There are no good estimates on the global scale of the gig economy but in the US there are about 800,000 people earning money this way — via online intermediaries such as TaskRabbit, Lyft, Uber and Deliveroo — without being anyone’s employee. The term “algorithmic management” was coined last year by academics at the Carnegie Mellon University Human-Computer Interaction Institute, and it is this innovation, they argue, that makes the gig economy possible. For companies like Uber, which aspires to “make transportation as reliable as running water”, algorithmic management solves a problem: how to instruct, track and evaluate a crowd of casual workers you do not employ, so they deliver a responsive, seamless, standardised service.”

When your boss is an algorithm
https://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/88fdc58e-754f-11e6-b60a-de4532d5ea35.html
via Instapaper

“How will we know when the A.I. revolution has taken hold? A technology truly matures when it disappears. We don’t marvel at houses with electricity now, or the idea of driving to work at 60 miles an hour. We can say “phone” and mean a hand-held computer with NASA-level processing power and a professional-quality camera for taking selfies with our drones.”

Artificial Intelligence Software Is Booming. But Why Now? - NYTimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/technology/artificial-intelligence-software-is-booming-but-why-now.html?nytmobile=0
via Instapaper

“I think the digital revolution is probably going to be as important and transformative as the industrial revolution. The main reason is machine intelligence, a general-purpose technology that can be used anywhere, from driving cars to customer service, and it’s getting better very, very quickly. There’s no reason to think that improvement will slow down, whether or not Moore’s Law continues.

I think this transformative revolution will create an abundance of labor. It will create enormous growth in [the supply of workers and machines], automating a lot of industries and boosting productivity. When you have this glut of workers, it plays havoc with existing institutions.

I think we are headed for a really important era in economic history. The Industrial Revolution is a pretty good guide of what that will look like. There will have to be a societal negotiation for how to share the gains from growth. That process will be long and drawn out. It will involve intense ideological conflict, and history suggests that a lot will go wrong.”

The Next Industrial Revolution Is Coming and It Could Destroy Millions of Jobs
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-next-industrial-revolution/498779/

Gerd adds: totally agreed on the "societal negotiation" on sharing the gains !!