AI Across Markets and Industries
EDUCATION
Education is also ripe for disruption, and AI is providing it. For instance, personalized learning customizes learning according to how students ingest information, whether by listening, doing, or speaking, and even whether they are introverts or extraverts. Education at the college level will increasingly be hybrid, a combination of in-class and online environments. Students now using GenAI for writing first drafts of research papers will soon have AI virtual assistants that augment their own intelligence by orders of magnitude so as to cope with the increasingly complex and powerful AI that will become dominant.
Augmented intelligence should be offered in college to prep students for an ASI workplace. Brick-and-mortar campuses could go the way of shopping malls and either lie barren or be repurposed for other uses. The cost of supporting them is simply prohibitive. Passing the cost on to students in the form of higher tuitions prevents many teens from attending, while saddling many of those who do with years of debt.
MANUFACTURING
Manufacturing is undergoing radical change due to the adoption of AI and, specifically, digital twins. These are virtual replicas of physical assets, processes, or systems that allow for real-time monitoring, simulation, and optimization. Designing an automobile using digital twins instead of real test-car models results in halving the cost of design and manufacturing. AI-enabled robotics and humanoid robots are also transforming manufacturing: Production lines for Teslas are aided by humanoid robots.
The power industry is slowly greening. Solar, wind, and water are inching out legacy fossil fuels that power electric utilities. At the other end of the power value chain, solar roofs, EV charging stations, and batteries that store power for buildings are making consumers less dependent on the traditional utility. Consumers can also return surplus power to the grid. Enabling this two-way transference of electricity is the smart grid, a decentralized grid that leverages an ecosystem of sensors, AI, analytics, and automation to facilitate two-way communication among various grid components. AI-enabled smart meters on homes and buildings give the utility real-time information on consumers’ energy usage, so utilities can monitor and manage energy distribution more efficiently.
AGRICULTURE
Precision agriculture is improving the way farming is done. It leverages an ecosystem of GPS sensors and, in many cases, drones to collect data about soil conditions, weather patterns, and crop growth. AI tech is used to create precise maps of a field which are used by farmers to optimize inputs such as water, fertilizer, and pesticides to drive greater crop yield. These tools can predict conditions such as drought, pests, or disease so that farmers can better adapt.
At the other end of the agriculture value chain are new exchanges that integrate market data such as the demand for different crops to aid farmers in decisions about what to plant and when to sell. This improvement in agricultural techniques requires the same or fewer material resources. The only change required for this type of modern farming is a layer of intelligence comprised of sensors and other AI-enabled and low-cost sensing equipment.
These AI-enabled applications are merely some of the more interesting ones. Businesspeople searching for AI’s killer app need only look at what is already being accomplished within numerous markets and industries. AI applications in smart cities, the military, and satellite and space industries promise even more world-changing results. Musk, for instance, has built Colossus (x.ai/colossus), the most powerful supercomputer/data center on the planet, that he intends to use to develop AI that is powerful enough to study structures in space so that we can understand the nature of the universe. That may turn out to be the ultimate killer app.