5 ways AI is making life better

Remember the scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the HAL computer goes a little crackers and blows astronauts into deep space? Yeah, we’re thankfully not quite there yet…

Instead, artificial intelligence has become a welcome part of our everyday lives, and it’s worth celebrating.

1. Medical care

White coats and stethoscopes may eventually be as weird to us as doctors in the seventies who’d smoke during consultations.

AI is filling many of the gaps in medical diagnostics, identifying what may be wrong with our eyes, liver, lungs, bones or circulation with near certainty.

John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford has developed a system that’s already beaten leading cardiologists in detecting heart disease. IBM’s Watson machine can sort genetic data in minutes, compared to the average 160 hours taken by a human analyst.

2. Train journeys

Packed, stifling platforms are a daily grind. When there’s a cancellation, or we you find a seat on your train, your day can sour pretty quickly.

But this is becoming a thing of the past. Companies such as Trainline are using programmes – in that particular case, BusyBot – to plan, organise and distribute journeys to the right passengers. Trainline’s AI system can tweak seat bookings so they’re in the least crammed areas of a carriage, depending on the stops where other people will be getting on.

3. Gardening

Some of us love pottering about in the garden, but plenty more aren’t keen. For the less green-fingered of us, robo-lawnmowers are really taking off – they can detect denser patches of grass, or where to change direction, based on learning and sensor technology.

Then there’s kit like the Gardena smart system, which sprinkles your lawn with water to the exact right level throughout the year. Temperature and soil nutrition is tracked and beamed to a smartphone. It’s bloomin’ marvellous!

4. Home comforts

From Alexa to Google and beyond, you’ve probably heard of the race for AI dominance in the smart home market.

Smart devices are doing all kinds of helpful tasks for us, like optimising our electricity and unlocking doors for the delivery guy while we’re at work.

Amazon Echo can direct all of your smart devices via voice control. Security cameras can now tell what a person looks like, sending the live feed to your phone. But, in the years to come, we’ll see all sorts of wonders emerge, such as automated music cues, shopping orders and food prep.

5. Getting a mortgage

In the past, getting a mortgage meant visiting a brick-and-mortar broker or going it alone. It was all offline, time consuming and potentially expensive.

At Mojo Mortgages we’ve digitised the process so that you can get a personalised mortgage recommendation online, for free, in minutes.

You can do it all from your phone or laptop with help an AI chatbot that answers your questions and learns as it goes.

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