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What’s the future of AI? Pennsylvania thought leader on technology had the answers.

  • Aniya Faulcon
Workhorse, the third robot developed at Carnegie Mellon University to clean up the basement of Three Mile Island's containment building, sits on display today at the school's National Robotics Engineering Center. Although officials involved with the cleanup effort decided not to use the robot, it served as the basis for future robots developed by the researchers.

 Amy Sisk / StateImpact Pennsylvania

Workhorse, the third robot developed at Carnegie Mellon University to clean up the basement of Three Mile Island's containment building, sits on display today at the school's National Robotics Engineering Center. Although officials involved with the cleanup effort decided not to use the robot, it served as the basis for future robots developed by the researchers.

Airdate: January 19, 2023


In the age of robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, self-driving cars, and chatbots people may wonder what’s the future of artificial intelligence and how can one keep up with new technological advances?

John McElligott, founder and Chief Executive Officer of York Exponential, had the answers for us on The Spark Thursday. He is a sought-after thought leader on exponential technology, robotics, artificial intelligence, economic development, and responsible disruption.

Artificial intelligence is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that usually require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. McElligott said, many have confusion around this concept because of movies like The Terminator and The Matrix. He also said, although artificial intelligence has its downfalls like robots dominating the workforce, there are major benefits like democratizing education and health care.

“I can tell you probably in the next eighteen months, we will see a pretty massive upheaval in jobs that were considered safe,” McElligott said. “And it’s starting to happen with artists, creatives and engineers. Schools are banning Generative Pre-trained Transformer because students are figuring out how to use it to cheat on their homework. So all of a sudden our grading system just went upside down. So I would say the next eighteen months is probably when we will see the biggest upheaval in how we respond to it (artificial intelligence) as a society and it will determine the direction of the AI.”

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The Spark

Southcentral Pennsylvania native writes about her world travels