Artificial intelligence is poised to make a major advance in the next few years. But several political and corporate dynamics are putting the brakes on progress, said Yang Wang, a professor of computer science and information technology at the University of Illinois.

First, such an AI will become dominant, Wang says, and then it will be difficult to take control of. Second, a smart AI will often do for us what we want to do for ourselves. Then the transition from smart AI to potentially revolutionary AI could occur quickly — within five years at the most, Wang predicts. Wang is among researchers who have noticed some similarities in the headlines around the possible arrival of such technology. The number of high-level AI systems that achieve higher-than-human performance has grown significantly. "Impact of Artificial intelligence on the global economy", there will be a "domino effect", according to Professor Jonas Salk.

The Australian Financial Review reported Friday that Australian banks will spend an estimated $14.4 billion as part of their efforts to commercialize AI in the wake of Bloomberg report in November predicting that $5.5 trillion would change hands by 2025. However, bank chief executive Ian Narev has cautioned against the hype, arguing that he is excited about the "evolutionary capability of the new technology, but cautioning that the new jobs will need to be reshaped by workers whose skills are evolving."

Morten Jerven, chief executive of the Institute of Information and Communications Technology, told CNBC on Friday the report was "not surprising.

[The] impact of Artificial intelligence on global economy and jobs is now "inarguable." A research paper presented in London today estimated that by 2020, 10 to 30 per cent of jobs in developed economies could be replaced by AI by the middle of this century. This has been borne out by the employment trends in the Silicon Valley region, the authors write. Last year, there were 155,000 jobs created in the Silicon Valley and 57,000 jobs left in the rest of the US. This is an 80 per cent increase.

The authors, Carlo Ratti, co-author of a new working paper on the subject, and Nicholas Havermiller, say that a combined effect will be far more severe in poorer.

While AI promises to be a tool for generating social benefits that cannot be eliminated, many fears seem misplaced. When the Wall Street Journal interviewed Schmidt last year, he said that AI was less transformative than many at the time thought and that both science and society were contributing to a false dichotomy.

"What [AI] is not is super-intelligent software as a replacement for people, in the way Google is touted," he said. "It will make us better. But how good it makes us is going to depend on how smart the programmers can be and how good the device can be."

With the rise of AI in the workplace is a question of when, not if, job loss will occur. Currently, predictions are that AI will affect 40 per cent of the U.S. jobs by 2026, and that number is set to rise to 60 per cent by the year 2052.

But with this rapid development comes a need to ensure that we are prepared to deal with the fallout. Gartner has previously noted that "worldwide, a significant amount of jobs may be automated, but only a fraction of U.S. jobs are at risk of being automated." Much of the research that has been done on the impact of AI on jobs has focused on specific applications of AI that are designed to boost productivity.

The Indian economy is now beginning to feel its impact [as well] Data sharing and analytical services are no longer left to professionals. Hundreds of thousands of people, from small- business owners to investment banks, are training themselves to help make sense of vast amounts of data and analyse it to make critical decisions.

In India, the government's web of programs to help businesses and government agencies make sense of data, called the Government Information System, or GIS, has been making a difference. India's IT sector has seen 25% year-on-year growth, and its GIS production capacity is expected to increase by 40% by 2020.

The economic impact of artificial intelligence is based on the idea that advances in AI will benefit humans to the extent that "social benefits outweigh the costs of increased reliance on AI for machine-driven decision-making." [In the end, the key to facing an AI future is right preparation.]