Artificial Intelligence Market Growing at 63%, Expected to Reach $16B by 2022: Report

The Artificial Intelligence market is expected to reach $16 billion by the year 2022 and will continue to grow at a projected rate of 63% over the next five years.

The proliferation of Artificial Intelligence across industries is ushering in an age of rapid digital transformation and disruption. Old paradigms are being tossed aside and what was once thought impossible is becoming the everyday norm.

“According to a 2016 Markets and Markets Report, the artificial intelligence (AI) market is expected to be worth $16.06 Billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 62.9% from 2016 to 2022,” reported hiring agency Paysa.

The top five companies that are investing most heavily in AI, according to the report, include:

1. Amazon  –  $227,769,001
2. Google    –   $130,048,389
3. Microsoft – $75,158,057
4. Facebook – $38,636,827
5. NVIDIA   – $34,280,190

Amazon leads the way by far investing almost $100 billion more than that of runner-up, Google.

Four out of the top five companies on the list banded together last year to form The Partnership on AI. Since AI has already beaten the best humans at Jeopardy, chess, and poker, its potential is only increasing.

Whole industries are being transformed and many factory workers, truck drivers, hospitality workers, and even those who work in healthcare are all “leading lives of quiet desperation” as Thoreau once wrote, in anticipation of the day when machines and computers will make them redundant.

The Partnership on AI has vowed to “formulate best practices on the challenges and opportunities within the field,” but its findings will most likely benefit those who prefer to consolidate power rather than everyday workers.

Read More: Partnership on AI vs OpenAI: Consolidation of Power vs Open Source

The Partnership on AI works “to provide a regular, structured platform for AI researchers and key stakeholders to communicate directly and openly with each other about relevant issues [emphasis mine].”

Answering to stakeholders while communicating within a closed group is hardly “Democratizing AI” — which is the stated mission of Partnership member Microsoft.

Read More: Microsoft’s mission to democratize AI must resist temptation for oligarchy

Nevertheless, through machine learning and AI, humanity will be facing its ultimate challenge — to adapt and become biologically integrated with AI or become irrelevant once the machines surpass humans in every intellectual aspect in what has been dubbed The Singularity.

Read More: The Artificial Intelligence Singularity and the Collapse of the World’s Money System

Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that by around the year 2045, “Nonbiological intelligence will have access to its own design and will be able to improve itself in an increasingly rapid redesign cycle. We’ll get to a point where technical progress will be so fast that unenhanced human intelligence will be unable to follow it. That will mark the Singularity.”

Serial entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk recently launched Neuralink to make humans more like machines rather than vice versa.

Read More: AI human cyborgs are next on Elon Musk’s agenda with the launch of Neuralink

Following on Musk’s Tesla Inc, SpaceX, and OpenAI ventures, Neuralink will work towards integrating the human brain with AI that would circulate through the veins and arteries using a “neural lace” interface.

“Over time we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” Musk explained at the 2017 World Government Summit in Dubai.

When creating an Artificial Intelligence, the Mayan Holy Book — The Popol Vuh reminds us that we must first determine why we are creating it lest we fall victims to our creations.

Read More: The Story Of Artificial Intelligence As Told By The Ancient Mayan Popol Vuh

In the Mayan creation myth, the gods created mankind to help with the daily toils of life, much like AI researchers today.

Only in the Popol Vuh, and indeed in holy books across all major religions, the creators lost control of their creations. They became irrelevant and humans became the overlords of Earth.

What will become of our own creations, and how does that bode for the future of humanity if a Singularity is imminent?