Artificial intelligence may have been written off as nothing more than an aspiration of science fiction in the early days of tech, but today the growing trend is far from fantasy. From innovation to controversy, regulatory policies and education around AI commodities are developing much more slowly than the tech itself, fueling fear and uncertainty around the paradigm-shifting trend.

“We don’t know what [AI] is going to look like 20 years from now. The piece that I am optimistic about, unlike a number of luminaries spelling the doom of mankind and elimination of … jobs … is that at the end of the day … we have the power to shape it the way we want,” said Beena Ammanath (pictured), global vice president of big data, artificial intelligence and new tech innovation at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.

Ammanath spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Peter Burris (@plburris), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the HPE Discover EU event in Madrid, Spain. They discussed how HPE is working to encourage the policies and cross-team collaboration systems that will enable AI to reach its full potential and reassure those concerned with the socioeconomic consequences of its rise. (* Disclosure below.)

Democratizing AI to bridge human-machine gap

Though AI has been through hype cycles before, the processing power and data available to computer scientists today is enabling rapid innovations outpacing society’s ability to understand and regulate it. The absence of systematized progress leads to poorer products and worried workers.

“It’s fundamentally changing how we work, how economies are made, and that causes a lot of fear and insecurities,” Ammanath said.

The key to correcting this pacing and creating consistent regulations around the AI trend is cross-team collaborations for sharing expertise that could prevent harmful developments. “When a computer science person is driving that product … he or she may not be aware of all the checks and balances and may not put the right guardrails in place. … The domain experts have to be involved, and today that’s not happening,” Ammanath said.

Regulating within industries is only one piece of the AI puzzle, and Ammanath is adamant that governments and schools must also do their part to educate and prevent against the skills gap that lends itself to problematic siloed work processes. “I think education itself has to fundamentally change so we can infuse more creativity into the education system. … It’s also an opportunity for us to leverage AI to make education better,” she said.

Investing in humans is key to HPE’s AI strategy, and the health of the trend in society overall. “The fear exists because there is so much unknown and also because there is a select few group of people who are shaping AI. … Everyone who is scared of AI should take an active role in understanding it,” Ammanath said.

The more people at all levels who understand this rapidly expanding technology, the better everyone can utilize it. “We are all so dependent on our phones … that is AI today. But we are not afraid of it. We use it; we leverage it. That’s how I think AI will be 20, 30 years from now,” she concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover EU event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the HPE Discover EU event. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE