How Narrow AI Will Disrupt Every Industry
by Lisa Bodell for Forbes
As we enter 2024, the speed with which AI has been mass-adopted — and how fast it’s evolving — is an indicator of what’s to come. As a futurist who analyzes trends and industry shifts, I’m watching the Narrow AI space closely.
It’s called “narrow” because it functions as a specialist that performs industry- or enterprise-specific tasks. If you’ve ever used a chatbot to return a product or resolve a tech issue, you’ve interacted with Narrow AI. The product recommendations you see after logging into Amazon are another example of Narrow AI.
It’s already transforming how businesses interact with customers, manage operations and make decisions, but I believe the next disruption by Narrow AI will be in software programming. Instead of writing code themselves, human programmers will task their AI programming assistants with developing and testing code. Human programmers will then level up as product integrators, where they’ll now guide the creation of software built and tested by AI assistants.
In the foreseeable future of streaming entertainment, Netflix (or one of its competitors) will develop a text-to-video app that allows you to alter the season finale of your favorite show. Or swap out an actor’s face with a younger version of them — or with your own face.