AI set to be ‘bigger than the Industrial Revolution’, according to experts
15 May 2023
Surpassing Google, Facebook, and even the Industrial Revolution, artificial intelligence’s impact on the global economy could be astronomical – so we must move fast to control it, say industry heavyweights.
Founder of Stability AI, Emad Mostaque has claimed that AI will be bigger than Google and Facebook within the next decade, just a week after former Chief Scientific Advisor Sir Patrick Vallance said that AI could impact the job market as much as the Industrial Revolution.
Sridhar Iyengar, Managing Director for Zoho Europe, commented: “Technological innovation should be at the heart of the UK’s growth plans with AI, in particular, acting as an extremely useful, high-potential tool for businesses to drive efficiencies and more.
“The UK has ambitious aims to become a ‘Technology Superpower’, so it’s important that the Government, regulators, and the business community collaborate closely to continue the rapid development of AI tools.”
“For businesses, AI can play a central role in informing strategic decisions as well as streamlining day-to-day tasks for staff. Forecasting, data analysis and fraud detection, for example, can be sped up significantly by automating programmes, while customer experience can be greatly enhanced through AI-powered chatbots that answer initial inquiries in a matter of seconds."
“AI certainly could be the ‘industrial revolution’ moment for the software industry. It's quite impossible that the next breakthrough for AI will be to generate code (software). For example, ChatGPT is just the beginning.
“This could mean that 'the low hanging fruit' of software development could be done by AI and only the highly sophisticated software is human generated. If this were to happen, over 50 percent of software in the next generation could be machine (AI) generated. This could possibly bring down the cost of software and the number of people working on it.
“The focus then may shift from software development to solution building, customisation and deployment – all of which is very people intensive and requires customer and domain knowledge” Iyengar added.
However, AI regulations remain top of mind for Mostaque, warning that: “If we have agents that we can’t control and they achieve a level of automation, the worst case is that it proliferates and basically controls humanity.”
“We have to be careful and move fast. I think this will have a bigger economic impact than the pandemic and it’s up to us to decide which direction.”
Emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, remain part of the Department for Science & Technology’s core focuses, having recently launched a £100m AI taskforce.