序言

The division of work between people and machines has continuously evolved for all of human history, but until the past few decades it was accepted that machines would help do the physical work, and even the repeatable simple comp uting work, but true intellectual work would be the domain of humans. With the advent of artificial intelligence technology, we are now in an era where machines can take over some of the thinking tasks and decision making for the first time. This is revolutionizing our world.

A great examp le is in transportation, where we are developing vehicles that can drive themselves autonomously. Real-time decisions are enabled by multi-sensory environments and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. This will change the cost of transportation, allow people to be more mobile and enab le productivity while we travel. In the long term it will change the very concept of what is fixed and what is mobile in our physical world. Imagine a future where cities can reconfigure themselves or services can come to you in ways never possible before... powered by AI-based transportation systems.

Beyond autonomous vehicles, AI will change every other technological ecosystem from wireless to clouds. The future of wireless communications with 5G, and eventually 6G, is entirely dependent on shifting work to AI systems in everything from radio resource managed to optimization of capacity. The trillion-user internet of 6G cannot be built without the speed and scale enabled by the AI world. In the multicloud world we have already shifted tasks such as security analysis to AI systems; other tasks involved in operating infrastructure are pushing most of the work to machines, leaving humans to supervise and make critical decisions only. This move has allowed us to scale the IT ecosystem at a rate that can keep up with the exponential data growth we are experiencing as we digitize the world.

AI is critical to our future and understanding it is critical for every technologist today. This book is an excellent resource for researchers, practitioners and students to learn from practical examples and related theoretical foundation. The authors address key topics in a unique way that is sure to inspire innovators—emerging to senior—to advance AI and its applications, keeping mindful of regulatory concerns, trust and ethics, and performance at scale in real-world scenarios.

John Roese(1)

President and Global Chief Technology Officer

Dell Technologies

(1)　John Roese是戴尔科技集团全球总裁兼首席技术官，负责为公司确立前瞻性技术战略并孵化技术创新，确保戴尔科技集团能够凭借对应客户未来产品需求的突破性技术，令公司始终处于行业前沿。