Artificial intelligence technology is on the cusp of huge adoption with global retail spend increasing to $7.3 billion annually by 2022 -- quite a spike from the $2 billion spent in 2018, according to a Juniper Research study.

AI is a powerful paradigm that cannot be ignored; it will reshape industries and enterprises around the globe. McKinsey estimates that "the adaptation of currently demonstrated automation technologies could affect 50 percent of the world economy, or 1.2 billion employees and $14.6 trillion in wages – China, India, Japan, and the United States--account for just over half of these totals." This promise is compelling, the ability to automate higher order work functions with a digital rather than human workforce is a disruptive force, and tho there are pros and cons, the reduction in costs and increase in efficiency, consistency and transparency is attractive. At Smartlogic, we think the'A' in'AI' would be more representative of today's machines if it stood for'Assisted' (rather than'Artificial') but we don't get to choose the words, so we will use the term AI. Assisted is more appropriate as it suggests a collaborative interplay between humans and machines (which are of course themselves a combination of various bits of hardware, software and networks).

Since computers first became useful tools, there has been malware to infect them. In the nearly 50 years since the first virus emerged, cyber-criminals have become smarter and sneakier, developing more powerful and less detectable methods of entering devices and stealing information. Fortunately, cyber-defenses have also improved in that time. Now, every day brings an improvement to one side or the other, and both sides' weaponry has become so efficient that any slight edge seems significant. Unfortunately, a problem is developing -- a problem that will undoubtedly impact all aspects of modern civilization, but cyber security first: artificial intelligence. Machines that can gather data, analyze it for trends, and make accurate predictions are undeniably formidable tools, especially in the fast-paced cybersecurity war.

Vint Cerf is often called the "father of the internet" and he frequently speaks about technology to large groups of people as Google's chief internet evangelist. "AI stands for artificial idiot," he said Tuesday, speaking before a largely federal audience at AFCEA's Internet of Things Tech Summit in Washington, D.C. Cerf used the tweet-fueled corruption of Microsoft's AI chatbot to make the point that AI systems today are only as smart as the people who interact with it. Twitter trolls, it turns out, aren't the type you want educating young, impressionable AI. "It's a good example of how an AI system can learn the wrong ways," Cerf said. Cerf also opined about the dangers the IoT presents to the general public and--in a stronger sense--to the U.S. military. "My theme is, 'It's the software, stupid,'" Cerf said.