Artificial intelligence - hype, hope and fear Posted on : Oct 16 - 2017

If my email inbox is anything to go by, a technology revolution is under way that is going to transform all of our lives very soon and it is called artificial intelligence.

A Welsh company is using AI to detect North Korean bio-weapons.

I could pop over to California to hear about "AI wearable solutions for aging population".

And Lloyd's of London has unveiled its first artificial intelligence deal. It promises that "in a decade a significant part of the insurance industry will be powered by AI."

These represent just three of the innumerable AI press releases aimed at me and other technology journalists over recent days.

Last week also saw the London premiere of AlphaGo, an excellent and surprisingly touching documentary about one of the great recent triumphs of artificial intelligence, Google DeepMind's victory over the champion Go player Lee Sedol.

And then, over the weekend, as if to confirm this is a subject that should occupy politicians and policymakers as well as journalists, a major report on what the UK should be doing to nurture AI was published.

It was commissioned by the government and authored by two distinguished computer scientists, Prof Dame Wendy Hall and Dr Jerome Pesenti.

They say the UK is already well placed as a centre of artificial intelligence, and the government should act to cement its position.

Their recommendations include:

• more investment in academic research
• developing more skills throughout industry and the education sector
• throwing open more datasets for AI scientists to work with
• encouraging the uptake of AI techniques by all kinds of companies

All of these ideas seem eminently sensible and uncontroversial. But they are also predicated on a belief that this is urgent - that we are making very rapid progress, not just in developing artificial intelligence but in applying it in areas that will transform the economy. View More