Photo by Graecyn Barron
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — R. David Edelman discussed the major applications of artificial intelligence (A.I.) in his lecture Monday night at the University of North Florida (UNF).
R. David Edelman is an MIT scholar and was a former presidential advisor for President Bush and President Obama. He worked closely with both presidents in the U.S. National Security Council and had continued his work by teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Edelman’s speech focused on the major applications of A.I. in today’s world and hopes for the future. He explained that A.I. is the basis of the future as society continues to expand technology and safety for people everywhere.
A.I. began as a system to recommend movies and food to internet users but has expanded significantly, creating a new world of safety and security. Edelman explained how A.I. is similar to magic, creating endless possibilities in fields of health, education, and transportation.
“A lot of A.I. can seem almost magical in what it’s able to do,” Edelman said, “even in some areas where magic has been long lost.”
In education, students are gaining access to programs never before seen, allowing them to learn at their own pace. Teachers are using this A.I. to their advantage, giving students an opportunity to learn in an environment that suits their needs. Edelman said that teachers are getting access to what learning strategies work for their individual students through this technology.
“In Vista Unified School District, a tough district in California,” Edelman said, “in one year of switching their math class in sixth grade to personalized learning, their students made two years of progress.”
A.I. isn’t only changing the game for education, it is doing so in the realm of health and safety. Edelman described the work researchers are doing on the effects of A.I. in identifying the sepsis infection in people before it gets to an untreatable stage. Computers and machines are able to identify dangerous diseases, which may lead to discoveries in identifying COVID-19.
Many students are also intrigued by the nature of A.I. in the medical field. Kimberly, a graduate student in the computer science program at UNF, described her view on why medical advances are the most important application for these new technologies.
“I’ve seen firsthand some of the products I’ve worked on, how A.I. can help people,” Kimberly said, “one of them was the opioid crisis. They have an implantable that releases medication at the right time before the person feels pain.”
Security is also a big industry that is beginning to see the rise of A.I. With driverless cars and robot security guards, the world is seeing an increase in everyday solutions with the help of machine learning. Edelman said that the Boston Public School System came up with a new bus routing system that saved money and carbon emissions.
“It saves 20,000 pounds of CO2 emissions per day,” Edelman said.
Self-driving cars are the future of transportation and are already being tested and used on the roads. Domino’s Pizza has been testing its new driverless delivery system and it seems to be working tremendously. Tesla has also been working on an auto-pilot vehicle that requires no work from the driver. Sofia Bagley, a student at Fletcher High School who attended the event with Model U.N., revealed her opinion on the most important application of A.I.
“The impacts it’s going to have on future security concerns in the nation,” Bagley said.
The impacts that A.I. is going to have on the future are remarkable. Through robots, machines, and computers, the world will start to look safer amidst some of the pitfalls of machine learning. Right now, A.I. is not perfect, still having bias and brittleness, but improvements are being made to create a better future. For example, a program developed as a chatbot lawyer has been helping refugee families seek asylum in safer places, which is greatly benefitting the economy of the United States as well as the safety of the refugees.
“That lawyer is actually helping refugees navigate the Byzantine bureaucracy asylum to help them find permanent homes,” Edelman said.
All of these positive effects of A.I. show us that even though there are some kinks to work out in this experiment of technology, it is worth continuing research efforts to increase the effectiveness of machine learning in these fields. Edelman stated that A.I. has massive benefits to so many different fields that deserve to be explored. He believes that artificial intelligence is working for us, not against us as we continue to improve the machines for the better.