Bot and sold
Artificial intelligence (AI) on the rise with human simplemindedness this week as the former embraces the business opportunities being generated by the latter.
The smart money is riding on big bot business ventures, starting with – who else? – Elon Musk. The visionary electric car builder, potential SolarCity buyer and aspiring rocket launcher has a more earthbound initiative in his Day-Timer: domestic robots.
According to a Business Insider story , the Tesla Motors bossman and OpenAI co-chairman, has targeted a home-use robot as one of the non-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company’s projects.
Another of OpenAI’s missions, says the BI story, is to research artificial intelligence “and other machine-learning technologies with an eye toward making sure that the robots don’t one day go rogue and destroy humanity.”
Good on Musk, a big-picture guy if every there was one.
Shopping bots and zombie buyers
Walmart, meanwhile, is also eyeing AI applications. The aim here, however, is far less altruistic than saving the world from rogue robots.
The global retailing colossus is instead aiming to harness robotics to help the less artificially or otherwise intelligent shop.
The TNW story notes that Walmart is reportedly collaborating with Five Elements Robotics on the project that will ease “the burden of pushing around a shopping cart, all the while offering up suggestions to shoppers.”
More zombie shoppers make good sense for the North American retail economy.
Ghostbot busters
Best bot business venture of them all, however, could be what was reported in the Guardian: artificial intelligence that can help people break off stale or stalled romances. Ghostbot, says the Guardian story, detects incoming texts from the person on the other side of the faded or otherwise unwanted love affair and delivers automated responses “lacking in warmth of enthusiasm, until the other person takes the hint.”
In the new age of mobile text communication and anonymous Twitter postings, face-to-face interaction, especially when it comes to difficult conversations, is becoming a quaint 20th century practice. Many likely already consider it some kind of tedious mental disorder.
Seeking signs of artificial financial intelligence
Bot-makers know that what the world needs now is not so much love, sweet love – as the Hal David/Burt Bacharach song advises – but sense, common sense.
Nowhere is that need more apparent than in the world of personal finance.
In the U.S., for example, a reported 66 million people have nary a thin dime saved for an emergency fiscal event. The Bankrate.com survey cited in the NBC story points out that Generation Xers are the worst offenders for adopting a wing-and-a-prayer approach to financial security: almost one-third of respondents from that demographic admitted they have nothing set aside in an emergency fund.
Maybe the government will come to the rescue – even though it has no money of its own.
Following their 17 million to 16 million referendum vote to divorce their Euro-mates after a oft-tempestuous 43-year affair, Brexit-bound Brits and their British pound will also be getting hard lessons in finances and global economics over the next two years of pre-separation preparation.
In Canada, the news is slightly better on the financial intelligence front.
Equifax Canada recently reported that the majority of consumers in the country are reducing their non-mortgage debt.
But, alas, Equifax numbers also show total consumer debt in Canada continues to rise: in 2016’s first quarter that debt hit $1,618.1 billion compared with $1,544.4 billion in 2015’s first quarter.
Bot wars beginning
Saving and wise spending would appear to be especially prudent in the face of artificial intelligence’s rapid ascendancy, because as a recent Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship’s report pointed out, nearly 42% of the Canadian workforce is at high risk of being replaced by robots and other sources of artificial intelligence.
Here’s hoping hope that Musk remains on task to keep rogue robots from destroying humanity.
In the meantime, let the business bot games begin.
