Im willing to bet you didnt know that artificial intelligence can help sort cucumbers. <\/p>\n
It can, and in fact it does. And while AI has gotten massive amounts of attention recently due to its role in making cars autonomous, doing facial recognition, and automatically translating languages, theres one man in Silicon Valley who really wants everyone developing any kind of technology-based tool to know that AI has something to offer them as well. <\/p>\n
Last year, Frank Chen, a partner at the A-list venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), published a primer on artificial intelligence. The 45-minute video took viewers through a history of the technology, from its birthday in the summer of 1956 through its years in the wilderness of technology and straight through current-daySilicon Valley, where it is dominating conversations at most of the largest tech companies there. <\/p>\n
In fact, if the mobile cloud was computings previous major era, the next will be the era of AI, Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, one of the worlds largest makers of the kinds of graphics processors that power the computers behind todays AI applications, told me last year. It is the most important computing development in the last 20 years, and [every major technology company is]going to have to race to make sure that AIs a core competency. <\/p>\n
Chens primervideo went unexpectedly viral, hetold Fast Company yesterday, becoming one of a16zs most viewed pieces of content ever. He began getting hundreds of inbound calls about AI, with everyone from policy makers to startup founders wanting him to help them understand this white-hot ecosystem. The editor of Fashion Week called me, Chen said, and said, Oh, will robots take all the fashion designer jobs?' <\/p>\n
Having been interested in AI since his days studying the technology at Stanford in the late 1980s and early 90s, Chen knew that it has now become mature enough that its applicable to a far wider range of people and companies than ever before. Indeed, his thinking on the matter has centered on the notion that, today, AI can help even an average product manager at Delta Airlinesthe kind of role few would have imagined could benefit from artificial intelligence or machine learningor a cucumber farmer. <\/p>\n
Thats why Chen has now published both an AI playbook that helps just about anyoneespecially non-technical audiencesunderstand how the technology can help them, as well as a second primer aimed at spelling out numerous ways AI has made its way into everyday life and spread well beyond the halls of the Facebooks, Microsofts, Amazons, and Googles of the world. <\/p>\n
AI isnt some future thing, Chen said, pointing to the fact that hes seen demos of Star Trek-like language translators that you can pop in your ear and that should be on the market in a year or two. <\/p>\n
In short, Chens explainers are offering the world his version of Everything you wanted to know about AI, but were afraid to ask. <\/p>\n
Many people find thattrying to understand the technology underpinning AI can hurt the brain. Doing so requires digesting concepts like convolutional neural networks (CNNs), recurrent neural networks (RNNs), supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and so on. Chen is basically saying, relax, its okay, lets unpack these concepts without math so that anyone can grokthem. <\/p>\n
Of course, for the more adventurous, he offers up more technical examples such as talking about what happens when you feed sentences into Baidus translator, or images into either Googles or IBM Watsons systems. He even walks people through writing a simple business card recognizer that uses an iPhones camera. <\/p>\n
Yet he wants people to know that each companys approach to AI is a bit different, with wildly different results to similar experiments. The AI wars are the Wild West. <\/p>\n
Chen seems a bit amused that hes ended up in the role of AI explainer, something hesort of fell into it by accident. <\/p>\n
But having embracing that role, hes now got an agenda: He wants people, not just hard-core technologists, to be inspired to try new things. He wants folks to see that AI has something for anyone building an application, that for everyone, theres something AI can do to give their software a serious boost. <\/p>\n
First, he says, its easier than ever to figure out how to make anyones software better, smarter, and more useful, and second, that it doesnt take a PhD to understand how to incorporate AI into tools. Anyone who can figure out how to use an API can take advantage of AI, he argues. <\/p>\n
I want people to be excited [about AI] in the here and now, he said. I cant wait for people to see what they can do once their software has superpowers. <\/p>\n
Yet Chen is also sensitive to how seriously confusingAI can be to some, and that many people assume the technology is controlled by the priesthood. <\/p>\n
Its not, at least not anymore, he says. And every new technology platform has felt the same way before it was democratized. <\/p>\n
Were just starting to get there, Chen believes, and when we do, AI will be everywhere, powering everything. And it wont be a specialized technology anymoreonce people allow themselves to really understand it and how it can work for them. <\/p>\n
Right now, AIs kind of the hottest thing in Silicon Valley, Chen said. So every company I see represents themselves as an AI company. [In a few years] nobody will say theyre an AI company, because itll be assumed. <\/p>\n
Daniel Terdiman is a San Francisco-based technology journalist with nearly 20 years of experience. A veteran of CNET and VentureBeat, Daniel has also written for Wired, The New York Times, Time, and many other publications. <\/p>\n
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