One of the words that came up frequently in my early digital career was “optimize”. We were always optimizing web content for keywords to improve search engine results and rankings. We optimized experiences to increase conversion of site visitors.
One of the words that came up frequently in my early digital career was “optimize”. We were always optimizing web content for keywords to improve search engine results and rankings. We optimized experiences to increase conversion of site visitors.
A few years ago, a story made the rounds confirming what many people suspected: The vast majority of thermostats on the walls in commercial buildings don’t do anything.
The future ain’t what it used to be. -Tom Petty, Spike
Consider two speculative sci-fi films, Blade Runner (1982) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Blade Runner was set in 2019 and 2001: A Space Odyssey was…2001. In both films, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a key role, and not in a good way.
An old story about corporate culture runs something like this:
A consultant gives a seminar about corporate culture and the benefits of having a positive, supportive culture that encourages collaboration, open communication, innovation, and other goodies. Afterwards, a CEO is overheard to say, in all earnestness, “I want one of those cultures, and I want it Monday morning!”
The Star Wars canon has medical droids playing a prominent role in autonomous diagnosis and treatment of injuries and illnesses. How cool would it be if even semi-autonomous systems could handle routine diagnoses and treatments, freeing doctors and caregivers to focus on more challenging cases? Well that future is a little closer to reality than some may think!
Humankind, it seems, has for a long time been fascinated with the idea of machines that can mimic the human capabilities of thought, intuition, creativity, problem-solving, and communication. From the chess-playing Mechanical Turk of the 18th century (which was actually a clever and elaborate ruse) through the ELIZA computerized “psychotherapist” in the 1960s and any number of sci-fi franchises and Saturday-morning cartoons, history has no shortage of intelligent machines, real or imagined.
