From the iPhone personal assistant Siri, to doing searches on the Internet, to the autopilot function, simple artificial intelligence, or AI, has been around for some time, but is quickly getting more complex and more intelligent.
"If we are going to make systems that are going to be more intelligent than us, it's absolutely essential for us to understand how to absolutely guarantee that they only do things that we are happy with."
Computer science professor Stuart Russell says, many present-day jobs that are labor intensive, or require data analysis, such as in the financial industry, will be replaced by machines with artificial intelligence.
"But if we replace all the jobs that require human physical labor and then we replace all the jobs that require human mental labor, then you have to ask, 'What's left? '" Russell said.
Guruduth Banavar of IBM sees a future in which new jobs such as data engineering will be created.
He says the future will require everybody to work with these learning reasoning machines.
So the skill set for many of these jobs will end up being different in the future.
Russell envisions that AI will change the economy and the current way of life.
Most people will be employed, possibly even self-employed, in providing individualized personal services to other human beings, and we won't have mass employment in manufacturing or in financial services.
The kinds of scenarios where there is a giant factory or a giant office building with thousands of people doing the same thing will go away.
Artificial intelligence is already transforming the health care industry.
AI can process huge amounts of data and have the most up-to-date research to help doctors diagnose and treat patients.
But there is also a dangerous side of artificial intelligence—autonomous weapons out of drone technology.
The risk with autonomous weapons is that people will use them as a kind of poor man's weapon of mass destruction—a poor man's nuclear weapon.
Russell says the international community need to create treaties to ban autonomous weapons.
"It is a race against time because the weapons are starting to emerge—the research is moving into development, development is moving into production," Russell said.
While it is up for debate whether artificial intelligence will hurt or benefit mankind, it is a fact that the technology is and will continue to transform many aspects of life.
Questions 23 to 25 are based on the recording you have just heard.
23. What will happen to the finance industry according to Stuart Russell?
24. What does IBM's Guruduth Banavar think people need to do in future?
25. What is the dangerous thing caused by AI?
