Artificial intelligence: the new electricity

• Author: Catherine Jewell
• Position: Publications Division, WIPO
• Pages: 2-6

2 June 2019

Articial

intelligence:

the new electricity

By Catherine Jew ell,

Publications D ivision, WI PO

The British-born computer scientist, Andrew Ng, is a

leading thinker on articia l intelligence (AI) and has been

a pioneer in its application for many years. He founded

the Google Brain project, served as Chief Scientist at

Baidu, and co-founded the online learning platform,

Coursera. Today, in addition to his academic work at

Stanford University (USA), Mr. Ng is heading up two

startups: Landing AI, which works with enterprises to

adopt AI, and deeplearnin g.ai, an AI education company.

Mr.Ng recently spoke with WIPO Magazine about the

transformative power of AI, and the measures required

to ensure that AI benets everyone.

Why is AI a ttracting so much atten tion?

AI is the new electricity. It will transfor m every industry and

create huge economic value. Technology like supervised

learning is automation on steroids. It is very good at auto-

mating tasks and will have an impact on every s ector – from

healthcare to manufacturi ng, logistics and retail.

“For AI to reach it s full potent ial, government s

should be thoug htful about prot ecting citiz ens,

while al so creating room for t he positive

innovation th at AI can brin g,” says Andrew Ng .

Photo: © NVIDIA Corporation