AI Articles and Analysis in Government

The vision of an army of small unmanned aerial vehicles streaming through the sky to rapidly deliver food packages has captured the imagination of the public, the media, and most importantly some of the largest companies in the world. Achieving this vision won’t just require overcoming the technological and safety challenges, but also significant buy-in from the public and policy makers.

The impact of AI on business and the role it may play in improving efficiency of operations and driving revenue is a main focus of the research conducted at Emerj. However, there are also a growing number of altruistic applications of AI that are being leveraged today.

Several car makers predict they will able to make true self-driving cars in the next few years - as we've covered in our recent self-driving car timeline article. This technology, though, is only valuable if there are plenty of roads these self-driving cars are legally allowed to travel on. Even if the technologies allow for true autonomy, without legal permission the self-driving cars are mostly worthless to individuals and companies.

While in previous decades military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) were very simple pieces of equipment, the technology has advanced rapidly. They are now used all over the world and are a multi-billion dollar industry. According to the Teal Group, current worldwide military UAV production stands at around $2.8 billion, and they project it will grow to $9.4 billion in 2025.

The market for military robotics is massive, and many developments can be observed in public competitions, university campuses, and DARPA's own announcements.

Thanks to the relative ease with which local governments can now gather real time data, combined with the capabilities of artificial Intelligence, cities are realizing interesting new ways to run more efficiently and effectively.

Historically, space has been an industry only governments and heavyweight airspace corporations (such as Boeing) could handle. Uses of AI in space technology might be expected to be even more expensive, but the last decade of innovation has made space more accessible - and thanks to AI - data from space is becoming much more useful for businesses and governments.

Episode Summary: Market research and trends is important when discussing AI and business, but it's also worthwhile to contemplate the ethical and social implications further down the line. How will countries deal with potential unemployment problems? How might countries collaborate to hedge against the risks that AI poses to the future of work and other economic facets? A relatively small group is helping people do just that i.e. getting organizations and countries to think through how they could hedge against the grander risks inherent in a world powered by AI.
In this episode, we speak with Jerome Glenn, head of the Millennium Project, a global participatory think tank with 60 Nodes around the world that that focuses on research implementing the organizational means, operational priorities, and financing structures necessary to address 15 Global Challenges. Glenn talks about how he gets principalities of the world to bring their big industrial players and the public to talk through possible scenarios that are 30, 40, even 50 years in the future, and about ways we might potentially hedge against risks and make the most of the upsides of AI in a global economy. If you enjoyed listening to our recent podcast with OpenAI's Ilya Sutskever on preparing for the future of AI, then you may find Glenn's ideas and the mission of The Millennium Project to be an interesting and useful perspective on this issue as well.