How AI and Venture Could Change The World (Whether We Like It Or Not)
As Venture capital gets drawn to a new tech trend, I’ll end up being drawn to digging into it as a matter of principle, and inevitably new business intel. It’s an interesting intersection – the inverse canary in a coal mine – not that I am able to write about said clients here, but they always turn up just as an industry is about to explode. It happened with the Internet of Things (for better or for worse), with the post CES 2015 (and CES 2016) deluge flooding both the media and my inbox, and now the machine learning and artificial intelligence ones have begun to pop up before, during and after CES 2017.
Basically, when technology and venture capital intersect, it creates a forward movement in which the funding pushes the technology to advance, which funds the development of new and even more interesting things, which gets more capital into the ecosystem. In the case of AI, there’re so many ramifications it’s almost ridiculous – both the potential positive outcomes of its existence and a growing fear of what its existence could mean for the world at large.
Even stumbling around CES last week I saw endless signs for things with automation – automated cars, automated cookers, automated cat litter boxes, automated truck fleet management. Until last year, AI only reminded me of a pretty solid Spielberg flick; now it’s boomtown in the venture community, with everyone claiming to do some form of deep learning, machine learning, natural language processing or automation.
Those that play with the money fueling the industry and have a feel for the technology see the positive side. Mark Minevich, author of the Reuters-published Six Billion Minds (a book discussing broadly the potential of globally outsourcing) and founder of Going Global Ventures remains bullish on a growing workforce, as many do in tech including the Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Mims. “I was just at the B20 Digitalization Task Force in Berlin in December, and a few things stuck with me in what they have found. 40% of economic growth will come from digitalization and technology. A 20% increase in the overall technology investment will directly result in 1% of economic growth on a global basis, which is huge.”
As AI and machine learning continue to become more prevalent, the worry is increasingly becoming less about Skynet and more about the jobless. The fear is obvious; as we automate more and more jobs, there will be less for humans to do, leading to even Y Combinator investigating the ways in which a nation could usher in basic income. However, there is also a huge chance for AI to create more jobs by finding those most in need for everything from simple data entry to even simply saying “you have this on your LinkedIn, perhaps you could do this.” Very basic versions have existed for years – but I can’t imagine we’re far from an HR system that can actively scan Twitter, LinkedIn and resumés for the perfect candidate.
