How To Invest In Artificial Intelligence

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A difficult question to answer is how to invest in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Much has been written about AI in the media in the past week, it started with an Open letter that warned about the development of AI. The open letter and Research from the Future of Life Institute (FLI) have investigated how we can prevent AI to act in an unwanted and destructive way. The Institute's scientific advisory board include, for instance, Elon Musk, Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX co-founder, and the physicist Stephen Hawking. Elon Musk has previously warned that AI is mankind's biggest threat, "Building intelligent machines is like summoning the demon", said Musk. AI research is progressing steadily, governments and companies are investing billions in development. It feels like all the big tech companies invest in AI right now, does that mean that you should also do it? Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT), Baidu (BIDU), eBay (EBAY), Yahoo (YHOO), Amazon (AMZN) and Facebook (FB) all have multiple large investments in AI and there are continuously new acquisitions. (I will go through the companies and their businesses in future posts.)

Building intelligent machines is like summoning the demon  - Elon Musk

Companies obviously see the potential to earn big money on it with all the investments. Last year, Google bought a company called Deep Mind for $400 million, and The Financial Times reported that IBM is pushing AI more going forward. The investments becomes clear when we look at the development of the all digital assistants that have appeared in recent years. Microsoft's quickly evolving Cortana is one of the best on the market, more available in the market are Apple's Siri and Google Now. New features are added all the time and they have only scratched the surface. Speech recognition has definitely come a long way and it's starting to reach levels where you can have a conversation with a computer. More things that have developed is, for example, Facebook's facial recognition software which is near human levels. Amazon owns a company called Kiva Systems, which manufactures inventory robots.

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It's not just companies that invest in AI, last year did some of Silicon Valley's biggest names make investments. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg (co-founder of Facebook) and Ashton Kutcher (actor and investor) invested in Vicarious, a company which goal is to build a neural network to replicate the vision, movement, body and language in humans. Co-founder Scott Phoenix say they want to build a "computer that thinks like a person ... except it does not have to eat or sleep". Musk was also one of the early investors in Deep Mind, which was acquired by Google. It's clear that companies and investors are heavily investing in AI but how can you invest in it? 

Investments and development of AI are constantly increasing, the race has only started.

It's difficult if you only want to invest in AI because it's usually a small part out of tech companies overall business. Many companies whose business only consists of AI research is acquired by larger companies. And if you want to invest in some startups developing AI you need large sums of money.  The options you have is to either invest in the larger tech companies on the stock market or in companies that manufacture robots. Of the largest pure robotic companies you find; KUKA (KU2), a German company that is specialized in factory automation and is the largest European industrial robot maker. Fanuc Corporation (FANUY), that provides unique automation products and services such as robotics and computer numerical control system. Yaskawa Electric Corporation (YASKF), a Japanese manufacturer of servos, motion controllers, AC motor drives, switches and industrial robots. ABB (ABB), the second-largest European industrial robot maker which mainly is active in automation technology areas. Another smaller company that manufactures robots is iRobot (IRBT), with its successful autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner: Roomba. It may be hard to choose a robotic stocks today, but it pays off to be well-read in the stock market when the development accelerates. I will not recommend any companies over others in this post because I want you to first get an idea of AI and its potential. Investments and development of AI are constantly increasing, the race has only started.

We will not be able to constrain a super-intelligence endlessly, it would be like chimps trying to keep humans in a bamboo cage.

Humans have already created machines that are better than us at chess and many other tasks, eventually will machines be as good as us in AI research. At that time, they will be able to improve their skills very quickly. Imagine 10,000 scientists conducting AI research around the clock and that never need to eat or sleep. These machines will move very quickly from human-level intelligence to super-human intelligence in a few years, weeks or days. Humans rule the earth not because we are the strongest or fastest, but because we are the smartest. We will not be able to constrain a super-intelligence endlessly, it would be like chimps trying to keep humans in a bamboo cage. Scientists have also said, with the development of AI, they will eventually have an instinct for survival, similar to our own. Will we be able to share the planet with it and still rule the earth?

Perhaps could AI help us maintain this planet instead of destroying it. Super Intelligent machines are not dangerous to humans because they will rebel against us, but for the resources they use to achieve their programmed targets. In order to achieve the goal they will use the resources that are needed, as Yudkowsky said: "The AI does not love you, nor does it hate you, but you are made of atoms, it can use for something else." Since human values are so complex, is it difficult to program human values into computers, we'll probably forget something we realized that we cared about. Learning machines all our laws and rules are also a difficult task. As FLI's research described: "Consider, for instance, the difficulty of creating a utility function that encompasses an entire body of law; even a literal rendition of the law is far beyond our current capabilities, and would be highly unsatisfactory in practice.” Perhaps will AI progress eventually be able to help us develop the technology for biological improvements. It seems that the complexity of our own brains may be beyond our understanding. They  could maybe be able to think out of the box sufficiently enough for us to figure out how to optimize our own brains.

Everyone is investing in AI because of the enormous potential that exists.

The cost of the hardware are falling rapidly and more and more people will be able to create advanced machines in the future. The development will skyrocket when the technology becomes available to the public, so everyone will be able to develop machines. Just look at what happened to the Internet and the mobile market when everyone could make websites and apps. AI have huge potential when it  becomes integrated into society, we can not predict what we can achieve with this intelligence. Everyone is investing in AI because of the enormous potential that exists, it will allow unlimited computing power that can unlock the doors to how to cure disease or reverse the aging process or even to digital immortality.

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