I’ve recently attended a workshop on deep and machine learning hosted by Rabbiteer. Not having any formal experience with Machine Learning, I was hoping to get my feet wet with a simple “Hello World” application. Instead, I was introduced to an unforgivably simple way of generating album covers based on year, genre, color scheme etc. with a few simple lines of code and a database of past album covers.
This got me thinking. It’s present knowledge that AI has gotten better than us at playing computer games, driving cars, making appointments, flying drones, painting, creating faces, writing articles, and even making music. AI has been around for a few decades, but it only recently started taking off dramatically with GPU technology catching up with the demand. Which begs the question, if AI already started doing these tasks in the last couple of years, what will be possible in 50 years’ time? What world will our children live in?
I personally reckon there will come a time in the next 10 years where studying to become a lawyer for example would be moot, because there’s no way of outsmarting a bot that has instant access to every single case file and legal loophole. The same could probably be said about these professions which are currently the top ranked by State in the US from a recent article:
With the learning curve of AI being relatively simple and the technology for any one to get started in their garage, we’ll undoubtedly see more and more job applicants becoming bots.
So we’ve unfortunately come to a point in time where we have to redefine how intelligent we are. If a bot can do your job, you are essentially obsolete because bots can work every second of every day, and are only limited by their processing power and complexity in terms of what can be accomplished in a day. There is a hilarious website called willrobotstakemyjob.com where you can see what the probability is of your current job being taken over by a robot – try it out.
To stay relevant in your current job, you need to leverage AI to your needs instead of fighting it. The best way to do that is by learning a scripting language like Python and start off with some basic machine learning exercises. I know that sounds exaggerated, but it is predicted that by 2020 if you don’t know a programming language, you will be computer illiterate. So you might as well learn an easy one like Python which is currently the fastest growing computer language because of the demand for AI in almost every sector.
Conclusion
It’s only a matter of time before AI disrupts your current job with some new innovation, so be prepared and face the inevitable. You might just find learning AI to be enjoyable and even become your full-time profession – which is very lucrative. So grab a copy of a machine learning book next time you go to the mall, or start with a free book here.
You’ll regret it in a couple of years if you didn’t.
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