When SciFi Becomes A Reality

What started as figments of imagination within our favorite science fiction books, movies, and television shows has now taken its place in our everyday lives. Artificial intelligence has been making science fiction dreams into reality for decades. While we don’t have robotic helpers at our mercy just yet, artificial intelligence has impacted our lives in more delicate ways. Voice recognition, meal preparation, and search predictions are all examples. These machines that we now trust to infiltrate our daily lives have learned algorithms, allowing them to react in ways comparable to Rosie the robot maid from The Jetsons or Marty McFly’s Smart Glasses. AI has enabled us to explore what was possible using science, technology, and intelligent computers. It is still in the process of evolving, as everything is, but we can predict the positive impact that AI will continue to have on society. 

AI is a concept that has been around far longer than the popular, futuristic cartoon we all know and love, The Jetsons. However, during the technological revolution was when AI went from an idea to a feasible existence. Early scientists that focused on the “thinking” of machinery were often ridiculed, but by the time the personal computer was released, people were gaining more interest in machines with brains. Media has shown various scenarios regarding intelligent technology and often turns towards a doomsday outlook, but AI has more potential and that conversation continues. The idea of AI tech is how it is able to collect and learn from data. Let’s take a look at some of our favorite real-life manifestations of AI in fiction.

In the early 1960s, The Jetsons were onto something when they depicted phone calls accompanied by images and showed robots that took care of the cleaning. Now we have robotic vacuums that can navigate alone throughout your home as well and applications like Facetime or Facebook Portal that allow video calls. This year, the Moley Robotic Kitchen was created to prepare any meal from scratch and clean up after itself. Artificial intelligence is literally making our lives more efficient and continues to change the course of human history. The funny thing is that it is often hard to realize how much of our technology uses AI and how we have ever gone without it. 

While there are obvious improvements in efficiency that come from AI technology, films often predict a future where AI has gone out of control; some of those predictions are coming true. Movies such as The Terminator, Minority Report, and Person of Interest depict AI as either becoming too self-aware or taking advantage of personal data. These days we have Google Translate, ATLAS (Advanced Targeting And Lethality Automated System), and National Data Analytics Solution. Within these technologies, Google Translated created its own intermediate language, ATLAS is used in the army and identifies and targets threats, and the Analytics Solution uses AI to analyze data and flag those likely to commit a crime. On the opposing side, fiction still offers a more idyllic future where AI drives an economy of abundance rather than scarcity and over-control.

We can thank Star Trek for inspiring many tech innovations that are now commonplace. Bluetooth headsets, cellphones, automatic sliding doors, and voice assistant are examples. The dreams we’ve seen through science fiction are becoming a reality. It’s predicted that by 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence. Learn more about the fruition of artificial intelligence from the infographic below.