From where and when did the interest of humanity in the future arise? Initially, the answer is in the records of ideas and imagination of several futuristic writers who anticipated the transition the world is going on. Among the futuristic works, the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a classic. Although Huxley wrote it more than 90 years ago, the book approaches questions and aspects of the future challenges of humanity. The hypothetical universe of Huxley makes comparisons with the “transformations” that the world has gone through for decades. Artificial pregnancy - “in vitro fertilization” - was a provocative and extraordinary work during that period, considering that the first test tube baby was born 40 years after it. That is the reason for the questioning: Romance or science fiction? Are we experiencing the prophecies made by Huxley and his precursors? What will be the limits and challenges with the advances of artificial intelligence (AI)? The intelligent use of AI is a way to create development opportunities.
TopThe Trajectory
In the last decades, technological advances in computing have accelerated a lot due, mainly, to the increase in speed of processing. Technologies that were only very limited, or imagined, began to become possible. That is the case of AI, which just began to reach a new degree of usability and practicability.
Science fiction can imagine the world that will result from technological advances and their social and political impacts decades in advance. Issac Asimov (1920-1992) was one of the first to deal with the subject of artificial intelligence in his series of Robots.
George Orwell (1903-1950)1 imagined a world in which technology would allow almost total control over the lives of individuals. Technology would become a dictatorship tool with cameras spread everywhere. Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)2 went in a different direction and imagined a world in which access to pleasure and information would make society more easily controlled and absentminded by a dominant elite.
Artur C. Clark (1917-2008)3 wrote about the possible use of artificial satellites4 (Clark, 1945), breaking the frontier between science and fiction. In a more distant future, he imagined space elevators, modern cities spread throughout the galaxy, and flying cars.
Their visions converge to our present world, full of electronic equipment at the service of humans, and screens spread everywhere. Technology is part of the daily life of the XXIst Century. Dreamed of in the past, AI materializes in the present as increasingly user-friendly tools.
In the imagination, in science fiction films, AI has to take a form to help the viewer visualize them as a plot character. This formed in the popular imagination an idea of what artificial intelligence and its effects could be. Many became blockbusters in theaters. They are stuffed with robotic figures, humanoid or not, that steal the attention of the spectators. They often appear as villains, such as HAL 90005 and VIKI6, but also as beings fighting for their identity, such as Ava7, Data8, and Andrew9. But Star Wars androids are possibly the best-known scene. Who doesn’t like the adorable duo R2-D2 and C-3PO, from the Star Wars saga?!
Figure 1. C-3PO and R2-D2, characters that enchanted the Star Wars saga
Although we do not find robots strolling in the streets, AI is part of our daily lives. Just with a cell phone we can connect to every part of the world, order a particular car, watch films, order meals, monitor vital activities in real-time, read books (e-books), and many other things not previously imagined.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020, several technologies became protagonists in people’s daily lives. Video conferencing apps such as Zoom, Skype, and Google Meet, distance education platforms, which were already present in our lives, have gained more space, as well as team and class management tools such as Microsoft Teams.
With social isolation, our homes have become offices. The home office has become a common expression and a benefit of the companies' HRs to employees. In addition, the space of physical learning has become a new channel of teaching as well as the EAD mode (distance learning), which is here to stay!
In this context, we can not fail to mention that, mainly to professionals of technology companies and startup entrepreneurs, it meant the agile promotion of solutions and the development of new functional tools that could meet society's new needs.
Now, in 2023, we have a new buzzword – Artificial Intelligence – AI.
And how will it materialize in the actual and practical organizational context?
To the computing scientist John McCarty (1927-2011)10, AI is the Science and the engineering to make smart machines and computers capable of tasks, understanding human intelligence but not limited to purely biological aspects (McCarty, 2007). To Professor McCarty, AI are computer program capable of executing human tasks through the development of proper programming and engineering.