The answer is, it depends.

When IBM’s Watson defeated Jeopardy Champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in 2011, not surprisingly, AI proved better than humans at accessing massive amounts of information from which to draw answers (or “questions” to use Jeopardy lingo).

When a chess-playing program, AlphaZero defeated another, Stockfish in 2017, it was due to its amazing ability to see infinite possibilities of gameplay that no other entity (human or digital) could envision; as it was not preprogrammed with human/previous game moves or strategies.

“The tactics AlphaZero deployed were unorthodox—indeed, original. It sacrificed pieces human players considered vital, including its queen. It executed moves humans had not instructed it to consider and, in many cases, humans had not considered at all. It adopted such surprising tactics because, following its self-play of many games, it predicted they would maximize its probability of winning. AlphaZero did not have a strategy in a human sense (though its style has prompted further human study of the game). Instead, it had a logic of its own, informed by its ability to recognize patterns of moves across vast sets of possibilities human minds cannot fully digest or employ. At each stage of the game, AlphaZero assessed the alignment of pieces in light of what it had learned from patterns of chess possibilities and selected the move it concluded was most likely to lead to victory. After observing and analyzing its play, Garry Kasparov, grand master and world champion, declared: ‘chess has been shaken to its roots by AlphaZero.'”

—The Age of AI: And Our Human Future (Kissinger, Henry A; Schmidt, Eric; Huttenlocher, Daniel. The Age of AI: And Our Human Future. Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition)

Will AI shake the cleaning industry to its roots?

Again, it depends. On what?

1. The progress of generative AI, or in other words, the degree to which computers think for themselves.
2. The limits we place on generative AI and the purpose to which it’s applied.

Who’s the Boss?

Will AI shake the cleaning industry to its roots?

Again, it depends. On what?

On what humans do with it.

As Microsoft’s CEO said: “We need to ask not only what computers can do but what computers should do.”

We welcome your thoughts.