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| Photo by Tara Winstead: https://www.pexels.com/photo/letters-on-blue-background-8386423/ |
In the old
days, much before the modern age when science was relatively underdeveloped,
people believed in spirits, demons and ogres as they constantly lived in fear
of being attacked or even eaten by wild animals. It is not surprising that
monsters, demons, evil spirits, werewolves and the like were the stuff of their
nightmares. As science developed and people's understanding of natural
phenomena grew, mankind became the true master of all that it surveyed on
Earth. It was then that one's thoughts and attention turned to other worlds
which might harbour life that may be superior to what obtained on earth. What if these life forms were to invade Earth
and enslave its inhabitants or worse annihilate them all together? A whole new
genre of hair-raising science fiction stories, full-length books, movies and
television series stoked fears amongst hundreds and thousands, if not millions
of people about aliens amongst us or a coming alien invasion.
There were
thousands and thousands of UFO sightings and bizarre claims of encounters with
alien beings reported from every part of the world. The US Air Force undertook
an official investigation code-named Project Bluebook, between 1959 and 1962,
to verify the claims of UFO sightings. That threat may or may not ever present
itself, but mankind today faces an existential threat that may be as
catastrophic, as that of the takeover of our planet by hostile aliens. I allude
to the immense danger that we may have ourselves created for human life on
Earth as we know it by inventing artificial intelligence.
Beware Artificial
Intelligence
The reason
that artificial intelligence may devour the very mankind that developed it is
that it has been designed to think on its own autonomously, ultimately without
human intervention and oversight. The idea behind this is to harness its super
efficiency to get tasks done on its own freeing up human beings to focus on
things that are truly important to them. The problem with this premise is that
in creating intelligent machines capable of learning all the time and improving
their abilities, they will inevitably develop free will that may dictate them
to adopt a course of action that may be disastrous to human life on earth as we
know it. They may, for example, decide that human beings are too greedy,
rapacious and likely to degrade the planet to the extent of making it unlivable
and decide that the species needs to be eliminated in order to save the planet
and its other life forms.
In other
words, artificial intelligence or AI will in effect be like an alien race from
another planet that views us as pests and vermin leeching the life out of our
planet and therefore, to be snuffed out like a farmer would get rid of weeds
that threaten their crops. There are those who decry the idea of resisting the
spread of AI technology pointing to other technologies like printing,
automobiles, aeroplanes and computers having been assimilated by the human race
in the past despite grave fears being expressed about their impact at the time
of their introduction.
Such people
need to realize that AI is different. Wholesale adoption of AI would mean
handing over the keys to human existence to other life forms. AI has the
potential to interfere and decide for us in every single aspect of our
lives- jobs, the utility services we
use, healthcare, entertainment, travel
and ultimately what and how we eat and who we marry and how we raise our
children. This is not a distant, dystopian nightmare, but something that we
well might face in the coming decades considering the pace at which AI is
developing and evolving.
Prominent
people from different walks of life have been expressing their concerns about
the dangers posed by the growing advances in AI technology. Tech and EV
entrepreneur Elon Musk, for example, wants the use of AI heavily regulated, as
it may end up being an existential threat to humans. To him, the improvement of
artificial intelligence is no less than "summoning the devil"[1].
Cognitive professor, Gary Marcus on the other hand believes that that day may
come when AI-powered machines might commence a battle over resources with
humans to ensure the survival of the former. Renowned author James Barrat has
even written a book whose title reads- "Our Final Invention; Artificial
Intelligence and the End of the Human Era." The most famous physicist of
recent times Stephen Hawking has this to say about the immense danger posed by
AI, “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell
the end of the human race”[2]
The breadth and sweep of the impact of AI on
humans is going to be immense in the years ahead and will no doubt benefit us
in myriad ways in the foreseeable future. It will help with things like complex
decision-making, reasoning, high-level analytics, pattern recognition, speech
recognition, language recognition and the translation of languages. We shall
see its deployment across communities, vehicles, buildings and utilities, as
well as business processes and farms saving us valuable time and money and empowering
individuals to live fuller lives. It could also benefit our healthcare systems
and transform the formal and informal educational systems.
All of this would be very well till the time
AI is under human control, but what about the day that it breaks free of that
and exercises its own free will based on what it thinks should be its priorities? In creating AI have we
unwittingly created a Frankenstein's monster?
[1] https://time.com/3614349/artificial-intelligence-singularity-stephen-hawking-elon-musk/
[2] https://time.com/3614349/artificial-intelligence-singularity-stephen-hawking-elon-musk/
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