Oscar Wilde thought hard work "the refuge" of those with nothing better to do while he envisaged a society of "cultivated leisure" as machines performed the necessary and unpleasant tasks. Karl Marx's dream was of state-regulated general production that allowed liberated workers to "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner" without the drudgery of being tied to one job. The 19th-century socialist activist William Morris advocated for more pleasurable work, believing that once the profit motive of the factory had been abolished, less necessary labour would led to a four-hour day. So Elon Musk's suggestion to Rishi Sunak that society could reach a point where "no job is needed" and "you can do a job if you want a job … but the AI will do everything" revives a debate on the issue of how we work that has long been discussed. Yet a world without work, experts question, may be more dystopian than utopian.

The article you are about to read was written by a human. This kind of disclaimer will become an everyday occurrence as chatbots, or large language models, infiltrate deeper into our media space. Doubts about the veracity of such disclaimers will also become commonplace. With the leaps and bounds registered by machine learning and large language models over the past couple of years, it is becoming increasingly difficult to prove that a human is on the other side of a written or spoken communication. How would I prove to you that these words were the product of human creativity and exertion?

That three-word pejorative is perpetually on the lips and at the fingertips of internet trolls and tech bros whenever media layoffs are announced. A useless sentiment in its own right, but with the recent advent of code generating AIs, knowing the ins and outs of a programming language like Python could soon be about as useful as knowing how to fluently speak a dead language like Sanskrit. In fact, these genAIs are already helping professional software developers code faster and more effectively by handling much of the programming grunt work. Two of today's most widely distributed and written coding languages are Java and Python. The former almost single handedly revolutionized cross-platform operation when it was released in the mid-'90s and now drives "everything from smartcards to space vehicles," according to Java Magazine in 2020 -- not to mention Wikipedia's search function and all of Minecraft.

Microsoft is adding new AI features to its popular apps like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. The new set of tools, called Microsoft 365 Copilot, will let people do things like create PowerPoint decks with a short prompt or summarize meeting recordings. Copilot runs on the same underlying AI technology that powers the buzzy viral chatbot ChatGPT, and is being tested now with a few business partners ahead of a wider release to all users in the "coming months," according to the company. "Today we are at the start of a new era of computing," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a livestreamed announcement on Thursday. Nadella said Microsoft's new AI products will "remove the drudgery of our daily tasks and jobs, freeing us to rediscover the joy of creation."

Writer is an AI-powered tool for checking and guiding content creators in organizations where voice and branding are essential. Its new feature CoWrite does that writing itself -- but don't worry, this isn't quite the content apocalypse we've been worried about. CoWrite is the latest in a new wave of tools that use large language models like GPT-3, but modify them using "fine tuning," a common phrase but with a special meaning in the machine learning world. Basically it means giving the big, general model a specific set of content to imitate more closely than the rest of the language it understands -- a bit like telling an image creation model to make a picture in a certain style by feeding it examples. Writer's tools already do this to a certain extent, ingesting style guides and other data to provide a live style-check service: "use this preferred word instead of that," or "use active voice in headlines," depending on what your organization likes.

You may be familiar with Bixby. Get ready to meet Xena, the workplace AI office assistant designed to take all the mundane tasks off your To-Do List. The idea is a part of the Xembly platform (itself billed as an "Automated Chief of Staff"), a new start-up led by some industry heavyweights like Pete Christothoulou from Marchex, Jason Flaks from Microsoft, and Peter Francis from Qualtrics. It has backing from the likes of Lightspeed Venture Partners, DocuSign founder Tom Gonser, and former Microsoft CXO Julie Larson-Green. That's why you should probably get ready for it – with that sort of backing, it'll be finding its way into your business eventually, even if it's not quite as soon as you might like.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is competent to have a revolutionary impact on businesses and consumers globally. It is no longer merely about codifying business logic, Instead, more about making tasks effortless, innovative and removing drudgery from human's life. Very few subjects in science and technology have caused much excitement right now as artificial intelligence as some of the world's brightest minds have said that it's potential to revolutionize all aspects of our lives. AI makes it practical for machines to understand from experience, act human-like jobs, and adapt to the latest inputs. The concept works by amalgamating enormous data with quick, smart algorithms, and iterative processing, enabling the software to decipher by analyzing patterns in the data in an automatic way.

Projected a few years ago to be a $150 billion industry by 2026, Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are radically transforming industries around the world and healthcare is no exception to this development. New AI applications are being developed and experimented with to streamline administrative and medical processes, enhance clinical decision making and support, manage long-term care - all of which are showing great promise. AI in healthcare refers to the use of complex algorithms designed to mimic human cognition and perform certain tasks in an automated fashion at a fraction of the time and cost. Simply put, when data is injected into the platform, algorithms, and machine learning solutions kick in, working with the data, using deep data analytics, and delivering outcomes and reports which would be as accurate if not more than human interventions. From making more accurate diagnoses, finding links between genetic codes to powering surgical robots, maximising administrative efficiency, and understanding how patients will respond to treatment plans, there are limitless opportunities to leverage AI in healthcare. Using machine learning in precision medicine can help predict what treatment protocols are likely to succeed based on a patient's attributes, treatment history, and context, allowing more accurate and impactful interventions at the right moment in a patient's care.

Originally published on SKAEL's Blog, republished (Feb 2021) "Work is work, and what matters to the worker is neither the product nor the technical process, but the pay, the hours, the attitude of the boss, the physical environment. The application of [technology] to industry will mean very little. What they will care about is what their fathers and mothers care about today -- improvement in the conditions of labor." The quote above was written in 1950, imagining a working world 50 years in the future in the year 2000. Huxley imagined that a huge increase in technological capabilities would change the nature of work substantially and it would be very different from what the farmers and factory workers did in his time. It's nearly impossible for today's working generation to imagine going to the office and seeing rows upon rows of desks with typewriters and adding machines clicking away, with secretaries delivering hand-typed memos and letters to physical inboxes as the primary form of written communication.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is competent to have a revolutionary impact on businesses and consumers globally. It is no longer merely about codifying business logic, Instead, more about making tasks effortless, innovative and removing drudgery from human's life. Very few subjects in science and technology have caused much excitement right now as artificial intelligence as some of the world's brightest minds have said that it's potential to revolutionise all aspects of our lives. AI makes it practical for machines to understand from experience, act human-like jobs, and adapt to the latest inputs. The concept works by amalgamating enormous data with quick, smart algorithms, and iterative processing, enabling the software to decipher by analysing patterns in the data in an automatic way. There is science and well thought algorithm behind all the artificial solutions, where you need to set up proper expectations and clarification to avoid any rumours and myths around the outputs.