Will AI lead to Utopia?

 

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While a fierce debate rages about the desirability or otherwise of the large scale adoption of AI by mankind, there is a growing realization that the inevitability of it making its way into everything cannot be denied. What is the point of resisting its inexorable onwards march, then? As the old saying goes-“If you can’t beat them, join them!”

After all, how bad can AI be since half the world and more are singing hosannas to it? Who knows it might lead to utopia? What if AI did all the work and allowed everybody the leisure to do as they please. What if it solved the problems of poverty, environmental degradation, sickness and wars, apart from enhancing everybody’s longevity? What is there to not like about such a technology? Are we foolish then to fear it?

But it could easily swing the other way and create a nightmarish never land where machines powered by artificial intelligence take over and decide to do away with the puny, inefficient, dim witted human race that forever messes everything up. So, what is the solution? AI with guardrails, the experts say. Deeply regulated AI that cannot go awry, they say. But that will only be till the time the power equation between humans and AI powered entities favours the former. Who is to say that the latter with their autonomous thinking abilities will not one day break away and turn on their creators? The world is indeed balanced precariously at the edge of a precipice.