2024年6月17日发(作者：)

人工智能（AI）革命外文翻译中英文

英文

The forthcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution:

Its impact on society and firms

Spyros Makridakis

Abstract

The impact of the industrial and digital (information) revolutions has,

undoubtedly, been substantial on practically all aspects of our society, life, firms and

employment. Will the forthcoming AI revolution produce similar, far-reaching effects?

By examining analogous inventions of the industrial, digital and AI revolutions, this

article claims that the latter is on target and that it would bring extensive changes that

will also affect all aspects of our society and life. In addition, its impact on firms and

employment will be considerable, resulting in richly interconnected organizations

with decision making based on the analysis and exploitation of “big” data and

intensified, global competition among firms. People will be capable of buying goods

and obtaining services from anywhere in the world using the Internet, and exploiting

the unlimited, additional benefits that will open through the widespread usage of AI

inventions. The paper concludes that significant competitive advantages will continue

to accrue to those utilizing the Internet widely and willing to take entrepreneurial risks

in order to turn innovative products/services into worldwide commercial success

stories. The greatest challenge facing societies and firms would be utilizing the

benefits of availing AI technologies, providing vast opportunities for both new

products/services and immense productivity improvements while avoiding the

dangers and disadvantages in terms of increased unemployment and greater

wealth inequalities.

Keywords：Artificial Intelligence (AI)，Industrial revolution，Digital revolution，

AI revolution，Impact of AI revolution，Benefits and dangers of AI technologies

The rise of powerful AI will be either the best or the worst thing ever to happen

to humanity. We do not yet know which.

Stephen Hawking

Over the past decade, numerous predictions have been made about the

forthcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI) Revolution and its impact on all aspects of our

society, firms and life in general. This paper considers such predictions and compares

them to those of the industrial and digital ones. A similar paper was written by this

author and published in this journal in 1995, envisioning the forthcoming changes

being brought by the digital (information) revolution, developing steadily at that time,

and predicting its impact for the year 2015 (Makridakis, 1995). The current paper

evaluates these 1995 predictions and their impact identifying hits and misses with the

purpose of focusing on the new ones being brought by the AI revolution. It must be

emphasized that the stakes of correctly predicting the impact of the AI revolution are

far reaching as intelligent machines may become our “final invention” that may end

human supremacy (Barrat, 2013). There is little doubt that AI holds enormous

potential as computers and robots will probably achieve, or come close to, human

intelligence over the next twenty years becoming a serious competitor to all the jobs

currently performed by humans and for the first time raising doubt over the end of

human supremacy.

This paper is organized into four parts. It first overviews the predictions made in

the 1995 paper for the year 2015, identifying successes and failures and concluding

that major technological developments (notably the Internet and smartphones) were

undervalued while the general trend leading up to them was predicted correctly.

Second, it investigates existing and forthcoming technological advances in the field of

AI and the ability of computers/machines to acquire real intelligence. Moreover, it

summarizes prevailing, major views of how AI may revolutionize practically

everything and its impact on the future of humanity. The third section sums up the

impact of the AI revolution and describes the four major scenarios being advocated, as

well as what could be done to avoid the possible negative consequences of AI

technologies. The fourth section discusses how firms will be affected by these

technologies that will transform the competitive landscape, how start-up firms are

founded and the way success can be achieved. Finally, there is a brief concluding

section speculating about the future of AI and its impact on our society, life, firms and

employment.

1. The 1995 paper: hits and misses

The 1995 paper (Makridakis, 1995) was written at a time when the digital (at that

time it was called information) revolution was progressing at a steady rate. The paper

predicted that by 2015 “the information revolution should be in full swing” and that

“computers/communications” would be in widespread use, which has actually

happened, although its two most important inventions (the Internet and smartphones)

and their significant influence were not foreseen as such. Moreover, the paper

predicted that “a single computer (but not a smartphone) can, in addition to its

traditional tasks, also become a terminal capable of being used interactively for the

following:” (p. 804–805)

• Picture phone and teleconference

• Television and videos

• Music

• Shopping

• On line banking and financial services

• Reservations

• Medical advice

• Access to all types of services

• Video games

• Other games (e.g., gambling, chess etc.)

• News, sports and weather reports

• Access to data banks

The above have all materialized and can indeed be accessed by computer,