The report, Stanford One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, has provided an understandable and comprehensive overview of Artificial Intelligence with respect of its development, accomplishment, short-term and long-term future trend covering eight main fields, transportation, home service, healthcare, education, low resource communities, public safety and security, employment and workplace and entertainment. From personal perspective, most arguments proposed in this article are very informative and reasonable, stimulating interests and broadening eyesight for a reader as college student. However, I think that some conclusion and prediction made in two fields, transportation and employment, might need more consideration.

Firstly, within the focus on AI changing transportation industry, the writers specified two potential application aspects, self-driving vehicles and transportation planning. Recent studies and report predicted that “self-driving cars will be widely adopted by 2020”. Experts also agree that autonomous vehicles would not only take the form of personal use but also ridesharing and public transportation. On the other hand, the writers introduced how AI can facilitate on-demand transportation such as Uber and Lyft by matching drivers to passengers.  However, I think the writers are collecting various information without conducting critical analysis. If self-driving takes place of traditional car in the near future, which is very likely to happen, then the matching algorithm would be useless since the amount of driver will reduce sharply or even the job will disappear by then. Furthermore, it is reasonable that on-demand transportation could result from AI applying into transportation industry, but the matching will not likely to happen between the driver and passenger, but instead, between the vehicle and passenger relating to their location, surrounding traffic condition and vehicle carrying capacity. In this case, whether the reputation modelling would be true might be open to doubt. Service companies, Uber and Lyft, need to make strategic transitions and adjustments considering the rising popularity of self-driving cars and autonomous vehicles. 

Besides transportation industry, there is an interesting prediction around current employment and workplace condition in the report, that “AI will likely replace tasks rather than jobs in the near term, and will also create new kinds of jobs.” I think the first half of the statement is too optimistic. A lot of examples mentioned in this article, such as self-driving car, intelligent tutoring system and city infrastructure design all replaced one or more job categories. In reality, AI’s abilities of language recognition and instant translation has been replacing traditional high-educated translators. Moreover, the article claims that “Changes in employment usually happen gradually, often without a sharp transition, a trend likely to continue as AI slowly moves into the workplace”. I assert that the time scale should be compared with the time spending on education. It is not rational that AI would cause a sharp change overnight, but might eliminate a previous employment category gradually over several years. The time period is usually not adequate to prepare education system to make appropriate response or adjustment. As a result, it is entirely possible that many well-educated individuals will be unable to get a job relating their major due to the time lag between employment market and education system, the point of which the report fail to justify. 

In sum, I cast doubt to ideas mainly from transportation and workplace in that it fails to reconcile future contradicted scenarios nor consider part of current trend when stepping into prediction.  

Note: all direct quotation comes from the report 

