After years hidden in the background, artificial intelligence is getting pushy: Don Pittis

It mayseemcrazy, but the world's biggest retailer is working on a scheme to use artificial intelligence to decide what you will want to buy before you've decided to buy it andsend it to your home.

AI, after years lurking in the background, is about to get significantly more intrusive.

And according to the experts, despite any protests to the contrary, we're going to get used to it.

Sometimes called "deep learning" or "machine learning" to distinguish itfrom thescience fictionmonsters that wrench power from human hands, the science of algorithmic prediction has suddenly become more powerful and pervasive than most of us realize.

But as Canadian artificial intelligence whizAjayAgrawal, co-founder of the startup Kindred AI, says in hisnew book, Prediction Machines, the power of machine learning is only half the reasonit'sworming its way into so many partsof your life.

Powerful and cheap

As an economist, Agrawalinsiststhe second, and possibly moreimportant reason, is that the cost of AI is plunging. And ashe says, "Cheap changes everything."

Agrawal, who among many other thingsis also a professor at the University of Toronto'sRotmanSchool of Management, says if itisn't already, AI is about to get in your face. AI will betelling you what to do, and it will be telling you in its own words.

"I think what will be, over the next 24 months, the mostnoticeableAIs that the average person will deal with will probably be in those two formats, through recommendation and through chat," he says.

The process has already started as shopping sites suggest what you should buy next and Siriresponds to your questions, but expect it to be more obvious and more widespread.

Most people who don't think they use artificial intelligenceare merely those who don't realize they are using it.

Until now, AI has flown under the radar in most of our lives, doing things such as preventing credit card fraud, filtering spamand smoothing out the action in video games, to mention just a few examples.

'AI first'strategy

No longer merely an interesting research project with an exciting future, companies large and small are adopting a strategy of "AI first." And that will change everything.

"If you want to understand the priorities of a technology company, first look at the seating chart,"the New York Timesreported earlier this year.

The boss of Google, SundarPichai, had reorganized the corporate seating plan so that he was surrounded by the company's artificialintelligenceteam, demonstrating the No. 1 priority in the organization. Other technology companies have done the same thing after decidingAI is themost important key to theirsuccess.

"What doesn't generally get as much press coverage is that when something becomes first, something else becomes second," says Agrawal.

"Effectively, what it means to be AI first, it means that a company is prioritizing prediction accuracy above everything else, so above short-term revenues, above user experience," he says. "Potentially, above privacy."

A conversationamongGoogle employeeson the Silicon Valley discussion site Quorareveals the reason why.Whereas an 80 per cent chance of getting the result you'reafter is good enough for Google searches, it simply doesn't make the grade when AI is booking your flights or operating your self-driving car.

100% accuracy

We are talking about a goal of close to 100 per cent predictive accuracy, which is astounding.

That accuracy is also why online retail giant Amazon is working on a plan to send you the products you were just about to order. It has already registered a patent for "anticipatory shipping."

Based on reams of data from you and billions of dollars of other purchases, Amazon expects to be able to so accurately predict what you want to buy that it will simplyship the goods to you and arrange pickup for anything you decide not to take.

That is the extreme form of the AI-driven process referred to as recommendation, where a predictive algorithm will know before you do when you aregoing to run out of tomatoes or toilet paper, and what movie you want to watch on your home entertainment system.

Better than monkey brains

"It might actually bring more variety into your movie consumption than you might have if you just leave it to your own monkey brain," says Agrawal.

The other place where AI hasbegun to compete with the mere monkey brains that invented it is conversation.Now, that person you are having a conversation with on the phone may actually be a machine.

In one example, the Canadian startup Adawas able to handle 94per cent of customer questions with AI, referring only six per cent to human operators.

Google's Duplex, an AI-based phone assistant, isso good at idiomatic English,as portrayed in thisexample, that there have been demands that AI technologybe required to make it clear in any conversation thatyou're not speaking witha human.

But will you accept being told what to do by a computer? At first, no doubt there will be a lot of resistance. Current AI strategies often include something called "human in the loop," where the technologyoffers a series of suggestions and the humanmakes the final choice.

But Agrawal saysonce people realize they are getting good advice, they get sick of saying yes, yes, yes, yes.

"I think as the machines make better and better recommendations, we'll be more and more willing to just give up a lot of these decisions to the machine."

Follow Don on Twitter @don_pittis