Problems with artificial intelligence || Will AI take over ?? || Big Problems Ahead - II

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the world is going through one of the most famous revolutions of all time, the information revolution. Although it is a controversy in itself, because of some concern about the information of the participants of this revolution, as it is an information revolution which includes in it both public and private and sometimes confidential information too. 

At the core of this revolution, there lies mainly two things, semiconductor technology integrated with integrated circuits and artificial intelligence to process and hold this large sum of information/data being obtained every moment from every sector of society taking part in this revolution, be it economic, social or other aspects. And this thing is aided by the results of the industrial revolution.

Source:: Forbes

Look, this revolution is not bloody like those French or Russian revolutions, instead, it is one of those revolutions which silently push our society and the humans as species toward the future like the Green revolution and related revolution in the second half of the 20th century.

Almost every element of this revolution is quite unquestionable until there comes some data collecting big tech giants and one of the core elements called Artificial Intelligence.

In this article, the data collectors will be kept aside and will discuss the issues with Artificial Intelligence after having a briefing about it.

So, What is an Artificial Intelligence?

In short, it is that intelligence or ability to observe, analyze, learn, store, apply and repeat obtained from a source other than nature (i.e. by birth). Generally, it is considered widely as the intelligence demonstrated by machines, yes it is correct but not totally. Some argue that “Frankenstein” by Marry Shelley had the ability to observe, analyze, learn, store, apply and repeat information, and hence was effectively able to interact with its surrounding, thus had intelligence but that is surely not of natural origin and hence had Artificial Intelligence.

Obviously, it was the concept, not the technology that dates back to Marry Shelley as Frankenstein was just another of those fictional characters.  

A brief history of Artificial Intelligence.

But it was Alan Turing who took this concept to the hypothesis and devised a hypothetical machine that can “effectively” process data based on stored information i.e. commands. And later, this hypothetical machine, or better the Turing Hypothesis became the foundation of modern computers.

This Turing hypothesis along with concurrent discoveries in neurobiology, cybernetics, information theory made researchers and philosophers of that time think about a possibility of an electrical “brain”. And following this in 1943  McCullouch and Pitts

Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts

made something (“Turing-complete” artificial neurons) that is now considered the first work on Artificial Intelligence.

Then came 1956, the year in which the popularity of AI just sky-rocketed just because of a workshop at Dartmouth College. And with this began the influx of money in this particular field. From industries to government/government bodies like DARPA of U.S. and British Govt. all started investing money in this particular field, which just came out of nowhere. 

But, little did they know about the size of this field and expected a quick result and thus disappointment followed. And with decreasing popularity of this field, all of them started fleeing from investors’ seats and the "AI winter" followed. 

And then again it came into investors’ spotlight with the success of “expert systems” only to see another last but hard and long blow of “AI winter”. And then soon after the Information Revolution began in the 90s and AI never looked back again, with a greater set of genius mathematicians, neuroscientists, cybernetics, data, and network experts it is now one of the most active areas of research.

Merits and Demerits of Artificial Intelligence.

Frankenstein was created by humans and thus humans felt like they have unlocked the ‘god mode’, little did he know that it was a monster.

The same is the case with AI, although it is not a total monster, it is in its infant stage with only a few decades of research on it. So we don’t clearly have any way to determine or know whether it is going to be that monster or something angelic.

But, we have obviously observed its effect among us as it is one of the core elements of the Information Revolution, which touches almost every part of our life, our social life, our personal life, our economy, our projects, plans, everything.

Among those effects, we observed an increase in the speed of accomplishment of the work with high precision with AI. and AI is even capable of successfully conducting operations that are too lengthy to compute without any specialization, which the AI has got.

AI is also able to simulate nature and perform all those calculations in seconds to deduce a final set of results when fed with an initial state and conditions. And this particular thing has opened a new window to look at the universe as we know it today, and in this way, we can build the basic blueprints and dream of the actual megastructures that can be built in the far future. 

AI not only contribute to simulation and knowledge of the universe, but it also has a great part in contributing to the development of the world as we see it today.

 

Issues with AI || Problems with AI 

By automating the manufacturing process car companies are now able to manufacture more cars than ever and the fun part is that this is being accomplished by a lesser number of workers (human) and a greater number of AI slaves. It is the second boom in car production, the first being Henry Ford’s very human “assembly line” which relied on perfecting a particular skill of a worker. But in this second boom, the AI just left no human to upgrade with specific skill/skillsets as machines took control of the whole production.   

Source:: The Conversation

This way a lot of employment is getting eaten by AI, and it became highly noticeable at the time when the COVID-19 pandemic is slowly retreating after taking away the jobs of millions. And it is noticed and well-archived in various forms, one among them is this article titled: “U.S. Lost Over 60 Million Jobs -- Now Robots, Techs And Artificial Intelligence Will Take Millions More” was published in Forbes. This article clearly depicts how the jobs snatched by COVID-19 are not coming back to the humans but to the AI slaves just because they are more efficient than humans, and in this way, AI is creating mass unemployment. 

But it is not the end of the problems of AI, there is another big problem created by AI, as they don’t feed on food instead they feed on electricity, and to date, 80% of the global energy need is being satisfied by fossil fuels which is a major contributor in the threat chart for human as species, and again one shouldn’t ignore the heating effect and related energy requirements by the hardware in which AI resides.

Conclusion

Look, there is no doubt that AI is the future, and hence it will be utilized and harnessed by we humans, like all the other resources we obtain from nature, but in this case, it is just a bit more man-controlled portion of nature. And obviously, AI contributed to some of the critical tasks that could have not been accomplished without it, like space exploration, navigation, communication, and a lot more critical tasks for society. And AI is one of the major elements among those which are driving toward the unification of humanity. And again it is also being used to do just the opposite.

Being an omnipotent tool, its user does decide what it can do. So if in the wrong hand it can replace humans with machines causing mass unemployment, can consume more energy to over-work and hence indirectly cause a lot of emissions and can push humanity toward extinction.

And if in the right hand it can accomplish the projects that humans could never do, and in fact, it can prolong our existence as a species.

Whether it is a problem or blessing is still a matter of controversy, but deep inside we all agree to the fact that we humans are biologically and evolutionary bound to what we are but that's not the case with AI, if given enough intelligence or just as much as we have, they can make us their pet or slave or something like that, just because they are free of any physiological boundary that livings face. probably that's why Elon Musk once in MIT said that:

I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. I mean with artificial intelligence we’re summoning the demon.
Elon Musk at MIT’s AeroAstro Centennial Symposium