What will AI ultimately mean to humankind?

According to business leaders, social influencers, legendary intellects and emerging thinkers, AI will:

• • Put an end to work
  • Change the world more than anything else in history
  • Amplify human intelligence
  • Reinvent the way people interact with technology
  • Lead to the end of the world
  • Challenge our ethics
  • Optimize production
  • Exploit workers
  • Increase bias and discrimination
  • Allow us all to be more creative
  • Affect billions of people’s privacy
  • Make mistakes
  • Be the best or worst thing for humanity

Those wildly disparate beliefs come from sources as varied as Stephen Hawking, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Kathy Pham, Elon Musk and Alan Turing.

We won’t use this space to join in the debate over the future of AI. Instead, we will accept the fact that some form of AI has become a daily reality for every individual and industry.

Now that AI is here, and it can theoretically do almost anything for us, we have compiled a to-do list to keep artificial intelligence busy for a while. Some of these tasks are immense, others are trivial, but they will all challenge AI to prove its worth.

The AI To-Do List

Broker world peace

Humans have failed miserably at this task since the dawn of civilization. Perhaps AI can rise above the racial, political, monetary, religious and geographic hostilities and help us find common ground.

 Shorten the wait time at Starbucks

Caffeine fiends everywhere would salute AI if they could get back the twenty minutes they wasted awaiting that precious Iced Caramel Macchiato. To some coffee drinkers, this ranks up there with world peace.

Minimize climate change

The only topic that spurs more debate and fear than AI is climate change. If AI truly is “the answer,”* this could be its ultimate test.

*Can you name another famous AI that was also known as “the answer?” Hint: The most wicked crossover in league history.

 Write the next Shakespeare play

The Infinite Monkey Theorem proclaimed that given enough time, a monkey with a typewriter would surely produce one of William Shakespeare’s plays. Let’s raise the Shakes stakes: AI needs to become the new National Poet of England and write a play that is truly bard-worthy.

Ensure a fair 2024 Presidential Election

This one is no joke. The right to equitable, accountable elections is considered sacred. Unfortunately, our all-too human government can’t seem to offer a solution to ensure that this fundamental freedom will not be jeopardized. Perhaps an AI election judge will keep the process fair for all parties.

Find the missing socks

It is estimated that one sock is lost for every three loads of laundry. Where do they go? Is there a great hidden sock cavern just below the surface of the laundry room? Or, are they ejected from the dryer vent for some lucky squirrel to pad its nest? Surely AI can fix this.

Alright AI, if you’re reading this with your omniscient web crawlers you have your work cut out for you. In the meantime, we humans will continue to try and solve the challenges of our age and wear matching socks.