Artificial Intelligence has moved leaps and bounds ever since 70 years back in 1950, Alan Turing asked the questions, “Can machines think?” With the advancements in machine learning and deep learning, Artificial Intelligence has made some major and “famous” advancements including

• IBM’s Deep Blue beating Chess Champion Gary Kasparov in 1997,
• self-driving cars,
•  IBM’s Watson thrashing the competition in Jeopardy in 2011 and,
•  the most recent Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo beating Go world champion in the Chinese game Go.

The list is long, but now more than ever, when the world faces the COVID -19 virus and people are forced to stay indoors, spend time on applications and rely on technology for practically everything; smartness and predictive capability that Artificial Intelligence offers would help us take some giant steps in the near future.

AI will find its utility in a vast number of spaces wherever there is the scope of learning, intelligence, and response. Some major impacts of AI in this decade would be in the following domains.

1. Healthcare: With millions globally impacted by COVID and governments leveraging digitization to track, identify, and control the spread, technology has been at the forefront. China using facial recognition, India’s Aarogya Setu app using Bluetooth and GPS to track the citizens, AI would help us foresee the spread areas, the impending disaster hotspots, and recommend better control strategies. Drug discovery has also been quickly gaining pace due to the ability to identify patterns and synthesize data at a much greater pace. Recently, a Japanese drug manufacturer used AI to create a drug for OCD in less than a year, when the average time was supposed to be around 4 years. This further suggests the tremendous potential of AI in healthcare.

• Security: AI can have large implications for cybersecurity to detect the threat and potentially malicious activities. AI system is also going to enhance the way physical security works currently. AI interactions at check posts, response systems, and rapid jurisdiction for fines such as violation of speed rules or other felony attempts could be a part of the future AI machine’s assistance.

• Virtual Offices and Assistants: AI is going to facilitate virtual offices in order to further help the people accomplish their tasks from home in a much more efficient and organized manner. Chatbots are going to take facilitate a lot of automation. This aiding of digital transformation will further be enhanced by personal assistants who could understand and execute commands on voice demands. We could think of this as a more personalized version of Siri or Google Assistant.

• Transportation: It’s not just the self-driving cars that we can expect in the coming decade. A lot more personalization will come in cars including full automation, voice commands, and tremendous leaps in the Internet of Things enabling efficient logistics across the network of all transportation lines. Advanced Deep Learning algorithms will be able to predict what objects, in the vehicle’s vicinity, are probable to do and hence make transport much more safe and effective.

With the above stated and countless other applications, we can optimistically expect governments and organizations to build better systems that’ll sustain tough times such as these through advanced technology applications. But at the same time, we need to be more vigilant to create regulations and mechanisms such that the risks associated with Artificial Intelligence, cyberspace, and data privacy are not overlooked.