AI is a present reality: we live at the threshold of an AI-dominated era. AI is more than a Technology wave. In the 21st century and beyond it is the very core source of power that fuels politics, business, and society: our minds, our work, and our homes. AI also rewrites the rules and forces us to lose no time in rethinking fundamental questions of our humanity. Our human brains will soon be required to adapt at hyper speed to a new paradigm of omnipresent machine intelligence. We all have to deal with both its opportunities and threats in a conscious manner. Presently AI obscurity, hypotheticals, hype, and hysteria are aggravating problems of increasingly polarized and disconnected societies. However, whose image AI development will take and how the AI Age will be shaped is still in the hands of informed and clear-sighted citizens and leaders. The authors undertook the task of making sense of AI, especially its impact on the present and the near future for responsible readers worldwide.
