Artificial intelligence (AI) may have burst upon the scene just last November, but it has been a part of our lives for at least several years. We may not have called it “artificial intelligence,” but many of us have been using it for years for our mundane tasks.
Google Maps is one clear long-running example of AI in some of our lives. It became available to us in 2005, not quite 20 years ago. The younger generations may feel particularly adept at using many of the more esoteric features of this app. But those of us of the boomer persuasion might have used Google Maps long ago simply as a digital version of the old Thomas Bros. paper map books that were sold in grocery stores and bookstores before the era of Google Maps.