In one of Isaac Asimov’s earlier robot books, he takes a moment to explain why you might have a bipedal robot, shaped like a human, looking (roughly) like a human.  One of the reasons suggested was that they could be generalists, much like humans are.  They could be reprogrammed to drive a tractor, or climb a ladder, or ride a bike, thus putting all the cost in to the programming (software) rather than into developing custom hardware for every application.

AI’s are likely to follow a similar path.  In game development we already have limited “AI’s”, pieces of software that serve as bad guys, that make alterations to the game based on interactions with the player.  In fact, most games have to cripple these, so as not to make the overall game too challenging for players.  They “think” insofar as they receive input, check it against a set of parameters (and sometimes experiences) then change their behavior to suit. Kind of like the cat getting sprayed with water when it claws the couch.

When most people think about AI they think about something along the lines of Azimov’s positronic brains, a human analog, constructed in mimicry of human thought processes and morality.  The real truth is that AI’s will likely be specialized through an evolutionary process much like the one described in this article.  They will be really really good at doing one (or a small suite) of relative tasks.  They will be widely varied (one AI who robocalls you to find out your politics, one AI who cuts your grass, one AI who drives your car).

The REALLY clever companies out there (I’m eyeballing GOOGLE for this) are initially going to follow a similar pattern to what you see now with their suites of Apps.  You will find yourself allying with one brand or another when it comes to your AI’s because they will all be able to share data smoothly, your lawn care AI can talk to your shopping AI for more fertilizer and your shopping AI can talk to your nutritionist AI to see if you need a fresh shipment of Soylent ordered in).