We are well past the hype of AI, and it is becoming clear that the technology's greatest problems revolve around making profits instead of how to make it useable. AI can provide immense value to many companies thanks to the increasing number of AI specialists and machine learning services. Companies often fail to cover initial investment when deploying AI. This seems contradictory, doesn't it? According to a recent IBM study, only 21% are capable of integrating AI into their business operations.

With the start of each year come predictions, plans, and surveys from consulting firms. When it comes to artificial intelligence, multiple recent surveys indicate that companies aren't just planning on spending serious money on AI in 2022 -- they are already making good money from the technology. A bit of context might be helpful. Despite some AI successes, one of the challenges in recent years has been that projects involving the technology have frequently lacked sufficient economic returns. In a 2019 MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group AI survey, for example, 7 out of 10 companies reported minimal or no value from their AI investments.

The age of artificial intelligence is here, jobs are going away, and we need a new way to participate the wealth created by AI. We need a new path to opportunity that is available to everyone. In this post, I propose a new ownership-based way to gain wealth from AI. Employment is not required. I will also offer you an opportunity to participate. For the past two centuries, capitalist democracies have operated largely on the idea that there are owners of businesses, and laborers who serve them against a wage.

The National Grid has confirmed that it is in the "earliest stages" of discussions exploring the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which could potentially maximise the use of renewable energy by predicting peaks in demand across the UK. The National Grid, which operates and owns the infrastructure that transports electricity across the UK, has seen its ability in balancing and stabilising the grid challenged in recent years as intermittent renewables such as solar and wind have been fed into the energy mix. While the introduction of renewables into the mix forms a key role in both national and European legislation to decarbonise the grid, concerns have been raised as to the National Grid's ability to deal with fluctuating wind and solar resources, which can sometimes produce more energy than the system can cope with. Energy storage and demand response initiatives, whereby businesses either store surplus energy or increase or reduce energy consumption based on demand, are being incorporated by the National Grid, which is now "exploring what opportunities" AI could offer to balance the situation. The National Grid revealed that it is in discussions with the UK-based AI company DeepMind about introducing new technologies to help balance the grid and improve the use of renewables.

Space exploration aficionados experienced the thrill of anticipation in the hours before President Trump's speech Tuesday night, with advance word that he was going to call for a return to the human exploration of space. Sure enough, in his closing words Trump declared that for a country soon to celebrate its 250th anniversary, "American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream." Trump's brief, offhand comment had the tone of an impulsive notion that, like so many of his other policy pronouncements, won't get any follow-through. Let's hope so, because the idea of sending humans to explore distant worlds is loopy, incredibly wasteful, and likely to cripple American science rather than inspire it. And that's assuming that Trump's notion doesn't have the ulterior motivation of diverting American scientists from their Job One, which is to fight climate change right here at home.