Artificial Intelligence Begins to Realize Its Potential
In my previous column, I looked at the problem of artificial intelligences forcing hardware to consume too much power, which could lead to an unsustainable spike in demand at data centers in this country by 2025. To test out their appetites for more power, I employed several advanced artificial intelligences, and also their close cousins machine learning, cognitive computing, deep learning and advanced expert system technology. For that column, I only measured how much power they consumed, but my original intention was to actually test them out to show some innovative things the technology was accomplishing. I am circling back to that effort now.
For many years we have been reporting on the technology of artificial intelligence, about how it’s being built out and made more efficient, or how it can be paired with other technologies like quantum computing to become even more accurate. At the same time, the government has been keenly focused on AI ethics, ensuring that our newly created smart programs and machines don’t go rogue or make mistakes that could get people hurt. The Defense Department now follows five ethical principles when using AI, while the intelligence community has its own artificial intelligence ethics guidelines.
There is still a lot of learning to do, but at this point we have pretty much covered the basics in terms of building out smart AIs and related technologies, power consumption issues aside. That is why we are starting to see a lot of interesting reports on projects that make use of AI, like figuring out which fishing boats out in the ocean are using forced labor or planning how we can safely get people to Mars.
These are some of the most interesting AIs that I have collected over the past few months, what they do and how well they perform.
The federal government invested big in the COBOL programming language back in the day. It was designed for business, finance and administrative systems within both private companies and government organizations. Today, however, it’s not actively used for any new projects, having been replaced by more efficient languages. Most COBOL programming today is used to maintain existing systems written in the language that can’t easily be replaced or recoded. The problem is that nobody is learning how to code in COBOL anymore, and most programmers that already know it have retired.
That is where Colorado-based startup Phase Change Software and their COBOL Colleague AI comes into play. Instead of trying to teach COBOL to modern programmers, it scans existing programs written in the language for vulnerabilities and problems, and zeros in on exactly what lines need to be fixed.
“There is certainly a skills shortage, however, the real problem is that the knowledge of the application is disappearing,” said Steve Brothers, COO of Phase Change Software.
Deploying an AI to look at code is almost like hiring a skilled human programmer. In the case of COBOL Colleague, it won’t make changes to the code on its own but will show where any changes are needed. Then skilled programmers, even if they are not totally familiar with COBOL, can make the necessary fixes.
ToxMod is an interesting artificial intelligence made by Modulate Inc, a company that specializes in innovative AI. ToxMod is designed to regulate live comments in voice chat rooms and is able to distinguish subtle differences between, say, someone using an explicative in frustration, and someone using it as an attack or as part of a hateful tirade.
