Artificial Intelligence: Empowering People -- Not Machines

The last time I wrote about artificial intelligence (AI) in the insurance industry was in 2017. I discussed the spectacular possibilities of intelligent automated interactions, personalized service for complex issues, and new distribution channels. Looking back on the article, I feel some of the same optimism I expressed two years ago -- but I also see my naiveté at the time. In some ways, the promise of machine learning appears even more spectacular today. We've seen remarkable achievements in game playing in systems like AlphaZero and AlphaStar, realistic pictures of people "imagined" by generative adversarial networks, and the image processing power of driverless cars and trucks.