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Microsoft Researchers Offer Predictions For AI, Deep Learning (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft polled 17 women working in its research organization about the technology advances they expect to see in 2017, as well as a decade later in 2027. The researchers' predictions touch on natural language processing, machine learning, agricultural software, and virtual reality, among other topics. For virtual reality, Mar Gonzalez Franco, a researcher in Microsoft's Redmond lab, believes body tracking will improve next year, and then over the next decade we'll have "rich multi-sensorial experiences that will be capable of producing hallucinations which blend or alter perceives reality." Haptic devices will simulate touch to further enhance the sensory experience. Meanwhile, Susan Dumais, a scientist and deputy managing director at the Redmond lab, believes deep learning will help improve web search results next year. In 2027, however, the search box will disappear, she says. It'll be replaced by search that's more "ubiquitous, embedded, and contextually sensitive." She says we're already seeing some of this in voice-controlled searches through mobile and smart home devices. We might eventually be able to look things up with either sound, images, or video. Plus, our searches will respond to "current location, content, entities, and activities" without us explicitly mentioning them, she says. Of course, it's worth noting that Microsoft has been losing the search box war to Google, so it isn't surprising that the company thinks search will die. With global warming as a looming threat, Asta Roseway, principal research designer, says by 2027 famers will use AI to maintain healthy crop yields, even with "climate change, drought, and disaster." Low-energy farming solutions, like vertical farming and aquaponics, will also be essential to keeping the food supply high, she says. You can view all 17 predictions here.
Flip the gender, and watch the outraged accusations of sexism.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
... because that's all they have.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The fact that they ask only women implies there is some reason to do that,
Yet we are left to guess at what that reason is.
The most obvious is that women have a better opinion.
How is that supportable? Why would they?
Why are we left to guess at the reason? It is explicitly discussed in the source article.
No, it's not that they think that women's opinions are better than those of men. Nor is it some direct attack against men. Since that idea came from your imagination, there is no need to get hot under the collar about it and attribute bad motives for to the authors of the study.
So remember the next time you feel that the world is out to get you and that the media hides the "obvious conclusions", that it is all in your head. Your own feelings of persecution have coloured your view of the world.
What I read from their predictions, especially the gig economy and getting more people into coding is that development work as a whole is commoditized, similar to meat packing, or textile making. It is done at the cheapest country worldwide, by the lowest bidders, for only the time it takes to write that module. This makes anything related to CS paying so little that it isn't worth getting into, with the earnings likely being less than working at a fast food joint.
This already is happening. Unless there is a specific industry like embedded programming or programming for a contract that the code can't be bought from the cheapest coding house in the world, the work goes offshore, and if someone has to do things in this country, it is contracted to a H-1B firm.
With this in mind, who in their right mind would want to go into development, unless they are in some niche that is very narrow and requires years of expertise. Even then, there is always the mindset of "it builds with stubs, ship it, fix after release" that is common in the industry.