Almost every day we hear about how artificial intelligence is changing the world we live in. This week, Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, the UAE's Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, said that AI will be a key weapon in the fight against the threat of tuberculosis, which claims the lives of more than two million people every year. Mr Al Olama told reporters that new technology will allow healthcare teams to use tools supported by AI to perform group examinations on individuals in areas where TB has been detected. That in turn should transform treatment protocols and will potentially save many lives.
Despite such obvious examples of the good that AI can bring to our lives, many people remain vexed by what the future will look like when the robots do finally take over.
Some commentators imagine a binary world of either “leisure heaven” (we will all enjoy a vast amount of free time because robots are doing most of the hard graft) or “workless hell” (we won’t have any form of income because they have taken all the jobs).
I don't think either scenario represents our future: a third way, much like the world the AI minister articulates, where artificial intelligence helps speed up and improve work practices but does not replace humans altogether, is far more likely. I also subscribe to the view outlined by our columnist Gavin Esler on these pages that because humans communicate and co-operate so effectively, it is too soon to write us off just yet. I need look no further than the technology in my own home for the reason why I believe that will be the case.
Eighteen months ago, we introduced Alexa, an electronic assistant made by Amazon, into our household. We now have Echo devices all over the house, each one ready to wake up as soon as it hears its name. While competing with other platforms, such as Google and Apple, Amazon’s smart speaker has managed to get into many homes, including ours, through a mix of blanket marketing on its mothership’s website and a relatively affordable price point. One way or another, such devices are here to stay. But it is still right to question how central will they really be in our lives?
Amazon persistently pushes its key message that Alexa has more than 50,000 skills, far more than rival devices, and is “always getting smarter” thanks to the addition of new features. Every week Amazon messages subscribers with details of those new features, positioning the device as an indispensable part of the smart home of today and tomorrow: want to be lulled to sleep by the sounds of a thunderstorm or know what time the latest blockbuster action film is showing at the cinema? Alexa can do that for you.
Alexa’s big idea, that our coffee machines, our air conditioning and our lights can all be controlled through voice commands is spectacular and, from a simplistic consumer point of view, it puts the robots to work so you don’t have to. But it turns out that smart homes are only as smart as the people who live in them.
Thousands of commands are not employed by most users, just like the vast majority of the thousands of pages of encyclopedia volumes that used to sit gathering dust on family bookshelves all over the world.
My own Alexa experience is that it provides a great music library, a global radio station and can remind me to do things, but it hasn't yet made our home all that much smarter. Functions such as its ability to tell you a joke or inform you about the origins of Halloween are gimmicks to superficially impress those who haven't yet adopted Alexa, rather than features you can't live without. Certainly, we are still a long way from the dark world imagined in the 2013 movie Her, where an operating system and a lonely man embark on an unlikely and intense relationship.
And the Alexa project is not engineering some great rewiring of our brains, in part because that ship has already sailed and the internet has already begun to change the way we remember things and the knowledge we retain. Educators have begun to respond to this, as this paper reported this week, with one Dubai college abolishing exams for its students, fearing that they were merely "memorisation tests" rather than true tests of knowledge. That's both a radical and realistic assessment.
What is still to be answered is what happens to all the information that electronic assistants learn about their users. What does Alexa do with the knowledge that I’ve been enquiring about the roots of Halloween?
At Gitex in Dubai this month, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web, said there should be greater "openness and freedom" and that the "silos of data" that some companies hold on their users must be brought down.
If every home is to be a smart home, fitted with listening devices ready to help us live our lives, then customer charters and a concerted push towards transparency will have to follow. Too many high-profile data hacks show us how much of our privacy can be violated if information falls into the wrong hands. Until we reach that point, smart homes may not be all that clever.
Nick March is an assistant editor-in-chief at The National
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
The years Ramadan fell in May
The%20specs
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The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
Seemar’s top six for the Dubai World Cup Carnival:
1. Reynaldothewizard
2. North America
3. Raven’s Corner
4. Hawkesbury
5. New Maharajah
6. Secret Ambition
Cases of coronavirus in the GCC as of March 15
Saudi Arabia – 103 infected, 0 dead, 1 recovered
UAE – 86 infected, 0 dead, 23 recovered
Bahrain – 210 infected, 0 dead, 44 recovered
Kuwait – 104 infected, 0 dead, 5 recovered
Qatar – 337 infected, 0 dead, 4 recovered
Oman – 19 infected, 0 dead, 9 recovered
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
MATCH INFO
Serie A
Juventus v Fiorentina, Saturday, 8pm (UAE)
Match is on BeIN Sports
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
From Zero
Artist: Linkin Park
Label: Warner Records
Number of tracks: 11
Rating: 4/5
The biog
Fast facts on Neil Armstrong’s personal life:
- Armstrong was born on August 5, 1930, in Wapakoneta, Ohio
- He earned his private pilot’s license when he was 16 – he could fly before he could drive
- There was tragedy in his married life: Neil and Janet Armstrong’s daughter Karen died at the age of two in 1962 after suffering a brain tumour. She was the couple’s only daughter. Their two sons, Rick and Mark, consulted on the film
- After Armstrong departed Nasa, he bought a farm in the town of Lebanon, Ohio, in 1971 – its airstrip allowed him to tap back into his love of flying
- In 1994, Janet divorced Neil after 38 years of marriage. Two years earlier, Neil met Carol Knight, who became his second wife in 1994
DIVINE%20INTERVENTOIN
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How to get there
Emirates (www.emirates.com) flies directly to Hanoi, Vietnam, with fares starting from around Dh2,725 return, while Etihad (www.etihad.com) fares cost about Dh2,213 return with a stop. Chuong is 25 kilometres south of Hanoi.
The%20trailblazers
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more from Janine di Giovanni
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
WWE TLC results
Asuka won the SmackDown Women's title in a TLC triple threat with Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair
Dean Ambrose won the Intercontinental title against Seth Rollins
Daniel Bryan retained the WWE World Heavyweight Championship against AJ Styles
Ronda Rousey retained the Raw Women's Championship against Nia Jax
Rey Mysterio beat Randy Orton in a chairs match
Finn Balor defeated Drew McIntyre
Natalya beat Ruby Riott in a tables match
Braun Strowman beat Baron Corbin in a TLC match
Sheamus and Cesaro retained the SmackDown Tag Titles against The Usos and New Day
R-Truth and Carmella won the Mixed Match Challenge by beating Jinder Mahal and Alicia Fox
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EName%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESmartCrowd%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2018%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounder%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESiddiq%20Farid%20and%20Musfique%20Ahmed%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EDubai%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EFinTech%20%2F%20PropTech%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInitial%20investment%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E%24650%2C000%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ECurrent%20number%20of%20staff%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2035%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%20stage%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESeries%20A%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EVarious%20institutional%20investors%20and%20notable%20angel%20investors%20(500%20MENA%2C%20Shurooq%2C%20Mada%2C%20Seedstar%2C%20Tricap)%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The specs: 2018 Peugeot 5008
Price, base / as tested: Dh99,900 / Dh134,900
Engine: 1.6-litre turbocharged four-cylinder
Transmission: Six-speed automatic
Power: 165hp @ 6,000rpm
Torque: 240Nm @ 1,400rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 5.8L / 100km
Godzilla%20x%20Kong%3A%20The%20New%20Empire
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Paatal Lok season two
Directors: Avinash Arun, Prosit Roy
Stars: Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Lc Sekhose, Merenla Imsong
Rating: 4.5/5
More on Quran memorisation:
The more serious side of specialty coffee
While the taste of beans and freshness of roast is paramount to the specialty coffee scene, so is sustainability and workers’ rights.
The bulk of genuine specialty coffee companies aim to improve on these elements in every stage of production via direct relationships with farmers. For instance, Mokha 1450 on Al Wasl Road strives to work predominantly with women-owned and -operated coffee organisations, including female farmers in the Sabree mountains of Yemen.
Because, as the boutique’s owner, Garfield Kerr, points out: “women represent over 90 per cent of the coffee value chain, but are woefully underrepresented in less than 10 per cent of ownership and management throughout the global coffee industry.”
One of the UAE’s largest suppliers of green (meaning not-yet-roasted) beans, Raw Coffee, is a founding member of the Partnership of Gender Equity, which aims to empower female coffee farmers and harvesters.
Also, globally, many companies have found the perfect way to recycle old coffee grounds: they create the perfect fertile soil in which to grow mushrooms.
The biog
Name: Abeer Al Shahi
Emirate: Sharjah – Khor Fakkan
Education: Master’s degree in special education, preparing for a PhD in philosophy.
Favourite activities: Bungee jumping
Favourite quote: “My people and I will not settle for anything less than first place” – Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid.
CHATGPT%20ENTERPRISE%20FEATURES
%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Enterprise-grade%20security%20and%20privacy%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Unlimited%20higher-speed%20GPT-4%20access%20with%20no%20caps%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Longer%20context%20windows%20for%20processing%20longer%20inputs%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Advanced%20data%20analysis%20capabilities%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Customisation%20options%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Shareable%20chat%20templates%20that%20companies%20can%20use%20to%20collaborate%20and%20build%20common%20workflows%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Analytics%20dashboard%20for%20usage%20insights%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Free%20credits%20to%20use%20OpenAI%20APIs%20to%20extend%20OpenAI%20into%20a%20fully-custom%20solution%20for%20enterprises%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Company%20Profile
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Plan to boost public schools
A major shake-up of government-run schools was rolled out across the country in 2017. Known as the Emirati School Model, it placed more emphasis on maths and science while also adding practical skills to the curriculum.
It was accompanied by the promise of a Dh5 billion investment, over six years, to pay for state-of-the-art infrastructure improvements.
Aspects of the school model will be extended to international private schools, the education minister has previously suggested.
Recent developments have also included the introduction of moral education - which public and private schools both must teach - along with reform of the exams system and tougher teacher licensing requirements.
