TEMPE, AZ — Can a sandwich-making robot help seniors age in their own homes?
That's just one of the many questions being asked inside Arizona State University's School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence (SCAI) around the real-world applications of AI.
"It can do five different kinds of sandwiches right now," Professor Nakul Gopalan said. "We want to scale it up to do 50 cold meals."
In the school’s manufacturing lab, students work on their ongoing projects.
Joshua Tint is using AI to help people from other countries, or people with disabilities, better understand social cues.
"We're all familiar with (a) head nod means 'yes,' head shake means 'no,'" Tint said. "In countries like Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, those meanings are reversed."
Kelly Raines has a program that helps describe parts of pictures to users, like people or cars. She says a future with AI is something to be excited about.
“I have a positive outlook," Raines said.
Tint agrees, saying he doesn't view AI as something that could replace people but rather help them.
“It extends our abilities in the same way a bicycle makes us faster or a computer makes us smarter,” Tint said.
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Still, AI likely will replace millions of workers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects demand for customer service agents, clerks, secretaries, and more to all decline due to AI.
The school’s director, Dr. Ross Maciejewski, says this cycle is nothing new.
“We’ve seen this throughout history that as technology comes aboard, more jobs phase out," Dr. Maciejewski said. “It’s hard to imagine a world where, if you think of telephones with a switchboard operator, that job doesn’t exist anymore once it was automated. There’s always concern about things getting automated out of the picture but new things replace those.”
He believes, over time, AI will create more jobs than it replaces. The Fulton School of Engineering has over 30,000 students, over 10,000 of which are in SCAI, making it one of the biggest in the country.
Dr. Maciejewski says with the size of the school, and many tech companies in the Valley, Phoenix is uniquely positioned to become a nationwide AI hub.
“Phoenix has all the components to be successful in this space and I’m excited about the future here,” Dr. Maciejewski said.
Students agree and say they're ready to be participants in one of the next big changes in our world.
“We’re in the middle of the next big revolution," Marko Jojic said. "Just like the industrial one and the agricultural one before that, and it will in the long run, when everything settles out, be in a much better place than we are now."
