Modern-day technical advancements are rapidly changing the world. Twenty years back, the internet was nothing as compared to today. Like the internet, the next big thing which is supposed to revolutionize the world is Artificial Intelligence (AI). When you hear Artificial Intelligence, the first thing that comes to your mind is probably the intelligent robot that can make its own decision based on the situation. In actuality, AI has a lot more applications than just creating a robot.

For the next installment of the informal TechCrunch book club, we are reading the fourth story in Ted Chiang's Exhalation. The goal of this book club is to expand our minds to new worlds, ideas, and vistas, and The Lifecycle of Software Objects doesn't disappoint. Centered in a future world where virtual worlds and generalized AI have become commonplace, it's a fantastic example of speculative fiction that forces us to confront all kinds of fundamental questions. If you've missed the earlier parts in this book club series, be sure to check out: Some questions for the fifth story in the collection, Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny, are included below. This is a much more sprawling story than the earlier short stories in Exhalation, with much more of a linear plot than the fractal koans we experienced before.

A fully autonomous ship tracing the journey of the Mayflower is being built by a UK-based team, with help from tech firm IBM. The Mayflower Autonomous Ship, or MAS, will launch from Plymouth in the UK in September 2020. Its voyage will mark the 400th anniversary of the pilgrim ship which brought European settlers to America in 1620. IBM is providing artificial intelligence systems for the ship. The vessel will make its own decisions on its course and collision avoidance, and will even make expensive satellite phone calls back to base if it deems it necessary.

A fully autonomous ship tracing the journey of the Mayflower is being built by a UK-based team, with help from tech firm IBM. The Mayflower Autonomous Ship, or MAS, will launch from Plymouth in the UK in September 2020. Its voyage will mark the 400th anniversary of the pilgrim ship which brought European settlers to America in 1620. IBM is providing artificial intelligence systems for the ship. The vessel will make its own decisions on its course and collision avoidance, and will even make expensive satellite phone calls back to base if it deems it necessary.

Only recently have I classified my observation, though I have come to the realization, each and every person you may find will define artificial intelligence in a series of ways. Because of its catchy name, different companies use the term "AI," in the description of products for marketing techniques. What recent the matter is about everything today that is named AI, really has no relation to it, by any means. It learns through this experience how to go through in life. We as people make choices based on what we have experienced and learned… though in opposition this "intelligence" would not do this, rather through these protocols.

Do you have free will? Can you make your own decisions? Or are you more like an automaton, just moving as required by your constituent parts? Probably, like most people, you feel you have something called free will. Your decisions are not predetermined; you could do otherwise.

Everyone now is learning, or claiming to learn, Deep Learning (DL), the only field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that went viral. Paid and free DL courses count 100,000s of students of all ages. Too many startups and products are named "deep-something", just as buzzword: very few are using DL really. Most ignore that DL is the 1% of the Machine Learning (ML) field, and that ML is the 1% of the AI field. Remaining 99% is what's used in practice for most tasks.

Everyone now is learning, or claiming to learn, Deep Learning (DL), the only field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that went viral. Paid and free DL courses count 100,000s of students of all ages. Too many startups and products are named "deep-something", just as buzzword: very few are using DL really. Most ignore that DL is the 1% of the Machine Learning (ML) field, and that ML is the 1% of the AI field. What's used in practice for most "AI" tasks is not DL. A "DL-only expert" is not a "whole AI expert".

The AI will have to be accountable, so different from DL, with outcomes you can explain to average judges and users in simple, legally valid words. Even where humans take final decisions, the AI tools should give detailed reasons that humans can either figure out as wrong (and so override, reverse the AI decision), or quickly accept by simply copy, paste and sign explanations prepared by AI. In the case of GDPR, only human staff can reject an application: the AI can automate the positive outcomes, else, if the AI denies a loan, job etc., it should pass the task to human staff, that will handle those negative decisions that make users angry, inquisitive. The risk is that the human staff, to save time and money, will make up fake explanations for AI rejections, and blindly accept AI approvals.

Everyone now is learning, or claiming to learn, Deep Learning (DL), the only field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that went viral. Paid and free DL courses count 100,000s of students of all ages. Too many startups and products are named "deep-something", just as buzzword: very few are using DL really. Most ignore that DL is the 1% of the Machine Learning (ML) field, and that ML is the 1% of the AI field. Remaining 99% is what's used in practice for most tasks.