YEARS of research have led to rapid progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI). On November 2, Google announced three ways people are poised to benefit from the advancements in AI. Jeff Dean, senior vice president of Google Research and Health, presented three transformative areas of AI: first, using AI to make technology accessible in many more languages; second, exploring how AI might bolster creativity; and third, AI for social good, including climate adaptation. The 1,000 Languages Initiative is an ambitious research project to build an AI model that would support the 1,000 most spoken languages of the world. In order to provide AI-based language technology for the world, they need to make sure they also train their models on representative content of the world.

Niels Bohr, the Nobel laureate in Physics and father of the atomic model, is quoted as saying, "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future!" I picked Ron Toews, not to criticize, but to use his AI predictions for 2021 (made last year) as an example of how harrowing this game can be. I'll admit, I'm too timid to make predictions, but I do enjoy tracking how well others did in the previous year. Also, Toews is very well informed about the subject matter, and he's not a vendor, whose "predictions" are not always objective. Here's my quick hits on Toews' ten AI predictions for 2021 - and how they fared.