Digital Financial Reporting

In a Wired article; Barack Obama, Neural Nets, Self-driving Cars, and the Future of the World; many important points were made relating to the capabilities and issues related to artificial intelligence (AI).  The article starts out with this statement:

IT'S HARD TO think of a single technology that will shape our world more in the next 50 years than artificial intelligence.

Here is a summary of important points made by the article:

• Generalized artificial intelligence vs Specialized artificial intelligence: A computer that can play chess is an example of specialized artificial intelligence.  An example of generalized artificial intelligence is where a computer can perform multiple tasks.  Specialized AI is not remotely as challenging to make work as generalized AI.
• Choices, Who creates the rules:  This statement was made regarding driverless cars, "There are gonna be a bunch of choices that you have to make, the classic problem being: If the car is driving, you can swerve to avoid hitting a pedestrian, but then you might hit a wall and kill yourself. It's a moral decision, and who's setting up those rules?"  Think about that.  When you program a computer choices are made.  Who will make those choices?
• Reliability and predictability: This statement was made, "One of the challenges that we'll have to think about is, where and when is it appropriate for us to have things work exactly the way they're supposed to, without surprises?"  Reliability, predictability, repeatability are essential to harnessing the power of artificial intelligence.
• Role of government bureaucrats: This statement was made, "The last thing we want is a bunch of bureaucrats slowing us down as we chase the unicorn out there."  While the government can be very important to starting innovation, the government needs to understand when to get out of the way.
• AI eliminating jobs: This statement was made, "There are actually very high-level jobs, things like lawyers or auditors, that might disappear."  And, "You're also right that the jobs that are going be displaced by AI are not just low-skill service jobs; they might be high-skill jobs but ones that are repeatable and that computers can do."  AI will eliminate jobs.  Best to add value in ways that computers cannot add value.
• Technology gap between public and private sector: "There's a huge amount of work to drag the federal government and state governments and local governments into the 21st century. The gap between the talent in the federal government and the private sector is actually not wide at all. The technology gap, though, is massive."

The entire article is worth reading.