Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been the hot topic for last few years now. According to well-known scientist Andrew Ng, “AI is new electricity”. But when common people think of AI, the very first image that comes to their mind is the image of “T-850 Terminator” from “Rise of the Machines” movie. This is just one of the example where books and movies have described a distant future which is ruled by machines and humans are slaves nearing extinction. It is because of these depictions of AI, general public fears the thought of AI being so overly used in most of the latest technologies.
A World ruled by machines:
AI is generally depicted as a worse technology ever invented in most sci-fi fictions. These fictions generally explain a situation where mankind is nearing extinction from earth. It is due to these wrong depictions people think that one day, AI will become sentient and then it will somehow think of Humans as a threat and try to eliminate all humans from the face of the earth.
Fear of the unknown:
Most people don’t understand how AI works, and are influenced by the sci-fi fictions. This unknown factor makes them imagine things that aren’t even likely to happen.
Fear of loss of Jobs:
The sole purpose of creations of robots is to make them complete daily mundane tasks such as placing the things in order, lifting heavy stuff, managing the records of a database, driving cars etc. It is believed that the tasks which doesn’t require much thinking or creativity can be done by robots. Although AI technologies aren’t quite there yet, most jobs we see today won’t exist after 10-20 years from now.
Biased AI:
Biased AI systems are the real threat for human as biased data is reflected in AI-based systems. These systems are everywhere from Facebook’s news feed system, to Amazon’s Face Recognition technology. Due to high impact, Biased AI systems are considered as most dangerous systems.
Why we must be more hopeful towards AI?
Beside all these fears we must be more hopeful towards AI. Humans can leverage so much with AI on our side. AI has changed so many aspects of our life for good.
If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea. pic.twitter.com/2z0tiid0lc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2017
Elon Musk must have flat out warned everyone about the threat AI pose to human society. In the year 2017 he tweeted “If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea.”. He has joined hands with other individuals and companies to fund a non-profit company OpenAI. The company’s sole purpose is to ensure Artificial General Intelligence doesn’t remain in hands of few companies to exploit.
Google, a company considered as the world leader in the AI field, has pledged not to build AI weapons, which is a sign of relief for most of us. The main focus of AI research in google is “social benefit”. They are trying to avoid unfair biases and incorporating privacy safeguards.
Deepmind, the company which developed the AlphaGo system, is dedicating itself to use AI for scientific discovery. They are using AI to predict the 3D structure of proteins based on its genetic sequence. Diseases believed to be caused by misfolded proteins will be diagnosed and treated using this technology. Deepmind has pledged to solve for intelligence and use that knowledge in medical science to impact the society in the best way possible.
In the current state, AI is not capable enough to understand sarcasm also it is easy to exploit. But how we take measure to use it for greater good matters the most. Worst case scenarios in sci-fi fictions can possibly become real but we must also think of “What our society could become if we use AI to make a better world?”
