Commentary: Emerging AI advances benefit humankind
By Lance Crayon
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The global AI industry is experiencing what historians will one day refer to as a “watershed moment.”The only way to advance the technology is to use it, and it has already been applied to the health, transportation and communication industries with positive results.

Society is warming up to the idea of driverless technology, and a few US states have passed legislation  that will spur industry growth. Experts have said that AI could save the US trucking industry, which is currently short some 60,000 drivers. The cost-saving effectiveness and efficiency of a driverless 18-wheeler would be a milestone event and the catalyst that ushers in a new era.

AI is also helping to build a healthier society. Hospital care providers use smartphone app technology to collect vital health information that assists researchers in their preventative disease efforts .

At Google’s annual developer conference, the company’s latest advances in AI software and technology were unveiled.

The search engine giant is a world leader in AI technology and to prove it, a new Gmail feature “Smart mCompose”  will have the ability to write emails based on data mined from individual users. It is a step up from “Smart Replies,”  introduced a few years ago for the individual too busy to write “I’m sorry.”

Another so-called breakthrough, “Robot Manners,” was created to help teach children how to say “please” to the Google Assistant and to “encourage better manners,” according to company executives.  

American parents will one day have another option to choose from when they are called upon to explain their child’s bad behavior. Those who  think they might need software to teach their child manners  may want to reconsider parenthood before making the commitment.

Technological advances in software and phone apps are gauged according to the amount of time they can save.  AI technology has arrived under the banner of “predictive texting.”

Some will embrace the experience of using technology that knows what the user wants to say before they know it , while others will still prefer to think for themselves embrace beauty of human  error over technological perfection.