Re:Research Priorities for Artificial Intelligence: An Open ...
by walod on Sunday January 11, 2015 @09:35PM
(#8872236)
It's also going into surveillance, warfare and predictive policing etc. I believe this is mainly because only big companies or deep pocketed individuals have real access, but there could come a "golden age" some time later where the general public can access truly powerful API's and the like, and then we would see a whole new frontier emerge. That is, if they can generalize the algorithms and make a workable product that doesn't need so much manual training and oversight by the engineers creating the AI.
I believe a significant portion of the implementation effort is going toward more effectively delivering ads and consumption, whether they're also writing a paper about indirectly related research or not. Google's most profitable business, by far, is their ads business. They would be crazy to not expend significant money and effort to retain their lead in that space. Other stuff that comes out of it (as nice as often it is, and as much as I enjoy it) is often just a pleasant side effect.
But, I could be wrong. I would also like to point out that I don't have other ideas on funding AI or big data research. I'm just uncomfortable with it, though I don't expect others to necessarily share that discomfort.