The Artificial Intelligence news is non-stop.
AI-powered robots can clean up after the kids, AI can out-debate a human, and AI can fake real life.
And at SecureWorld Seattle, we're excited to hear The Bald Futurist, Steve Brown, talk about what else is happening in the AI space.
However, with all these predictions on how Artificial Intelligence will change everything—the way electricity did—why aren't we seeing more change? Some are asking that question.
Toronto's Globe and Mail had a fantastic look at this topic over the weekend. For starters, the article looked at electricity and the way it revolutionized everything.
The revolution was much slower than anyone thought it would be, based on the invention's promise to change the world. And the same thing happened with the development of computers. At first, its impact was limited.
"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics." So stated Nobel laureate and MIT economics professor Robert Solow in 1987. Eventually, economists found where the productivity gains from the computer age were hiding: in the future. As we know, they finally showed up. But they took longer than expected because they depended on investments in complements.
The article's authors, respected experts in their field, say we are now entering a new phase of AI development, where all the academic and industry studies over what Artificial Intelligence can do, "... will give way to fierce competition among firms over the ownership and control of scarce complements, such as data, infrastructure, talent, and relationships."
We can imagine factories that wanted to switch over to electric power at the turn of the century but could not find a qualified electrician to do the job. It wasn't a job at all before electricity was invented, and developing specialists in the space took time.
Now, we appear to be in the same talent shortage in Artificial Intelligence. It is new and those with experience in it are relatively few.
Proof of that appeared in October 2018 at Cal Berkeley's Aartificial Intelligence career fair, which Reuters reported on:
Too few AI-trained job-seekers has slowed hiring and impeded growth at some companies, recruiters and would-be employers told Reuters. It may also be delaying broader adoption of a technology that some economists say could spur U.S. economic growth....
And as Reuters discovered, the talent shortage has lead to six-figure starting salaries for most AI professionals, and some very highly compensated Artificial Intelligence experts on temporary assignments.
Michael Solomon, whose New York-based 10X Management rents out technologists to companies for specific projects, says his top AI engineers now command as much as $1,000 an hour, more than triple the pay just five years ago, making them one of the company’s two highest paid categories, along with blockchain experts.
AI and blockchain professionals are the most highly compensated in tech? That backs up what we're hearing as Advisory Council members help us plan our 2019 SecureWorld cybersecurity conferences.
The future will be built on blockchain and powered by Artificial Intelligence. It will revolutionize nearly everything, including cybersecurity.
However, it just might take a little longer than we were expecting to get there.