Editorial: Talking to your phone is one thing, but what else can we expect from Artificial Intelligence?

Paul Fitzgerald demonstrates VR shopper360 technology, during an artificial intelligence event hosted by IBM.

EDITORIAL

More of us are talking to our phones.

Ask Google a question and mostly you get a sensible answer.

Ask it to add an appointment to your calendar simply by talking to your phone and you save a bunch of fat-fingered typos.

It's all part of the artificial intelligence revolution that is upon us, and has come a long way in the last five years or so.

Back then Google had trouble understanding what you were saying and you predictably received a bunch of irrelevant answers.

Some large companies now use AI to answer calls from the public. Instead of running through a menu of options and asking you to push buttons 1, 2 or 3 … you are simply asked the nature of your inquiry and, if all goes well, you are put through to the right department.

Amazing really and much more user friendly, although still no substitute for simply speaking to a human operator. But we're getting there and the job landscape is changing as a result.

Columnist Terry Sarten discusses the current state of AI in his latest column. He notes both the positives and the negatives, including job displacement, one of the big fears amongst those concerned about a truly AI future.

He reminds us that AI is simply a machine, and not to abandon our humanity and the qualities that come with that.

AI development seems to have stalled somewhat over the past year or two. No real breakthroughs have been forthcoming and it may be some time yet before AI displaces lawyers, doctors and many of the white collar jobs that it could well do over time.

But whatever the pace of development those things are likely to come, eventually.

Meantime for most of us AI is something that is happening in the background, in labs and corporations. For the general public talking to our phones may be about it for the foreseeable future.