What Did Ray Kurzweil Predict? Communicating with someone across the world by smartphones, lighting the house with electric light bulbs, and even traveling outside the earth with spaceships are all things, which human beings could have never ever imagined before and which have come into the reality in the past hundreds of years. Human beings have conquered countless difficulties and crossed technology thresholds, and that leads to a question: when the next breakthrough will happen and what it will be like. Historian Yuval Harari points out that human immortality is possible in the future, and humans change it from the imagination to a technical problem. This idea is approached by Michio Kaku, a physicist, in two ways: one is to create brains that have consciousness and processing functions exactly like real human beings, and the other one is to model a real brain in a biological way.

When asked about wealth inequality, few can say they clearly understand how severe this gap is. For a more precise visual, consider that Elon Musk, reportedly the richest man on Earth, has a network that exceeds the gross domestic products (GDPs) of countries like Portugal, Pakistan and Finland. According to the UN, even a small fraction of his wealth, $6 billion, would save at the very least 42 million people who are on the brink of starvation. Although Musk is just one example, his wealth indicates one thing, a very extreme wealth gap that currently exists, leading many to wonder about the reasons for this. For one, the aphorism "the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer" often comes to mind.

Automation and AI are coming for jobs - and African American workers are particularly at risk. African American workers will have higher rates of job displacement than the general US population due to automation, according to a new report by the consultancy McKinsey. While 22% of all jobs in the total workforce will get "disrupted," meaning either killed or replaced by lower-paying work, it's 10% higher for the African American workforce. That means 4.5 million black jobs could be displaced by 2030 without any intervention, according to McKinsey. African American workers are at greater risk for job loss due to being overrepresented in the jobs that will face the most cuts after AI and automation take over, like office support secretaries, fast-food and service workers, and mechanics and other practitioners of production work. About 34% to 36% of jobs in those three sectors will get disrupted, McKinsey says.

Society is rife with fears about the future of AI. For some, like Richard Branson and Ray Dalio, it's AI's exacerbation of the wealth gap and the looming social crisis it could bring about. My worry for AI, however, is that we are vilifying a technology that may in fact be our single greatest resource for creating a just world--if we build it right. While there do exist serious ethical conundrums and uncertainties regarding the potential for artificial superintelligence, at the moment, what we are facing on Earth is mostly a complex assemblage of human problems. It is true that automation is contributing to the increasing inequality within most countries, with the income gap widening between each country's educated middle and upper classes and their less-educated lower classes.

Billionaire serial entrepreneur Richard Branson told the New York Times in June that a universal basic income is an appropriate response to income inequality. "A basic income should be introduced in Europe and in America," Branson told David Gelles of the Times. "It's a disgrace to see people sleeping on the streets with this material wealth all around them." In particular, Branson said the acceleration of machine intelligence is driving the need of cash payments. "I think with artificial intelligence coming along, there needs to be a basic income," said Branson.

There's a common saying that it's expensive to be poor; it elegantly states the paradox that many Americans face, which is that even small amounts of available capital can avoid future, more troublesome capital outlays. In a way, the corollary is that it also takes more time to be poor. It is important to recognize this dichotomy in light of the discussion about AI and income inequality. Based on our data, our projection is that higher-income shoppers are more likely to be early adopters of AI technology. In doing so, they will be able to delegate mundane tasks, creating more of their prioritized commodity: time.

From Amazon's Alexa on more than 10 million countertops and Siri in every iPhone to GM implementing IBM's Watson into OnStar and Tesla's autopilot using cloud-based learning, Artificial Intelligence, in various forms, is reaching a point of cultural ubiquity. This tipping point has provoked a range of responses from thought-leaders and visionaries: Elon Musk warned of the existential risk of AI, and Richard Branson posited that the extreme wealth generated by the technology should be used to fund a Universal Basic Income. Less discussed at this point, however, has been how everyday consumers conceptualize, feel about, and use AI. To fill this gap in the current conversation, The Integer Group conducted a four-phase research study into consumer adoption of, and attitudes toward, AI. The research included a quantitative survey of more than 3,500 households and 15 in-home ethnographies with consumers in the U.S.

Here's What We Can Expect from Deep Learning in 2016 and Beyond

Here's What We Can Expect from Deep Learning in 2016 and Beyond

Here's What We Can Expect from Deep Learning in 2016 and Beyond Robots Need "Common Sense" A.I. to Work in Our Uncertain World