Page 23 - Artificial Intelligence for the Internet of Everything

10 Artificial Intelligence for the Internet of Everything

by increasing in size and complexity. Shuldiner writes that while nature is
often complex beyond our fullest understanding, and while the things that
humans make are often more understandable, this is not always the case; for
example, the parts that presently comprise the IoT form a whole that is often
too complex even for experts (King, 2017). The author writes that, in con-
trast to nature, there is a clear direction between what humans intend to
build and what they hope to achieve. Of course, he writes, there are excep-
tions. But still we humans associate this belief closely with our expectations
for new technologies. In his view AI is being used to do the tasks that
humans cannot easily perform (e.g., we humans can operate business spread-
sheets by hand with pencil and paper, but neither as fast nor as reliably as can
software; VisiCalc, for example, the first spreadsheet software demonstrated
the power of personal computing; in Babcock, 2006). The author writes that
as AI helps humans to achieve their intentions; it helps us to better under-
stand nature, our cultures, societies, and economies, including many of the
complexities that we humans face or have faced in the past. However, the
point the author wants to make is that as we use AI more and more, in our
attempts to better understand and to manage our private and public affairs, at
the same time, perhaps unwittingly, we are injecting more and more opacity
into our lives (e.g., the average user of a cell phone may not care to know the
intricacies of its operation). As is already the situation, AI is proving too dif-
ficult to fully understand. With this opacity, Shuldiner suggests an important
tradeoff is taking place. Namely, human users (and maybe future machine or
robot users) can focus their energy on operating AI systems or on under-
standing the technology in play, but maybe not both at the same time. Shul-
diner proposes that useful IoE requires useful AI. But by embedding AI into
IoE, particularly the intelligent infrastructure that will make up what he
terms the “Internet of Big Things,” humans and their technologists are cre-
ating a global operating system that is in a large sense opaque. To cope with
this situation, he believes that we will have to accept a relationship with the
smart things around us that is more akin to that of a parent with its child than
to that of a user with its device. He concludes that we may come to under-
stand our legacy problems better than in past years, but just as fast we are
obscuring many aspects of the new world that we are building. The appli-
cation of IoT to a human footbridge in a major metropolitan city by the
author provides an early example of the unexpected uses of IoT and of
the opacity that the developers of this “smart bridge” may encounter. With
his sketch and privacy concerns about the use of IoT in everyday life, the
author has skillfully characterized a future rapidly approaching.