Artifical Intelligence: Not So Intelligent

While the idea of being surrounded by robots who do all our work for us does sound extremely appealing, it’s like an attractive red coloured medicine. Beautiful to look at, but turns bitter when you actually eat it.

We exist in the midst of a technological revolution which uses machines as a weapon to conquer everything humans can and to some extent even things that humans cannot. The concept of AI was introduced by the Ancient Greeks who fantasized about inanimate objects coming to life and behaving like humans. Then came the various Science Fiction authors, followed by the Hollywood adaptations of their writings. Scientific research regarding AI began seriously in 1956 at a conference in Dartmounth College in New Hampshire. IBM’s Deep Blue became the first robot to defeat a chess champion and accelerated the growth of this field. AI has only seen development since then. Soon driver less cars and virtual supermarkets will be a reality too. The human with human interaction will decrease so much, that soon we might actually have to consider speaking to somebody as a luxury too.

The human intelligence is characterized as a bell curve which shows that it is indeed true that some humans are more intelligent than others. The same can be true with machines, some machines are more efficient, and also smarter than others. Similarly, the machines can be smarter than some humans too. In the constant competition between private and government agencies to come up with the most advanced technology, they may just create a robot which is smarter than maximum of the human race. Or just a robot capable of programming other robots! After all, the robots are mainly run by algorithms which can be framed in any way to self-learn as well. Unlike the earlier trial and error tactics, the robots are now programmed the same way humans or animals learn and the machine works just like our brain does. Such major learning capability can definitely lead to subsequent creation of machines with capabilities greater than humans.

The major concern is the uncertainty of what might happen when the AI industry is at its peak. The trivial effects would be immediate unemployment and increased dependence on machines. But the long term include the very serious threat to the survival of the human race and a possibility of nuclear war and drastic climatic change.

While the advantages of AI are uncountable and all of its development will surely help us, what the need of the hour is that this development does not become so fast and careless that we create a potential threat to our very own race. The main fault that we make is that we do not understand the real meaning of intelligence. It is not only a set of programs and algorithms, but it is something we acquire with experience. Will a machine ever be able to determine the difference between right and wrong? Will the robot understand emotions and ethics? Will we be able to control these machines or will they control us? Before using high end technology to solve our problems, we need to answer these questions. We are creating an entity which may lead to the end of an entire species and hence we ought to be a little careful before we maximize the extent of what it can do.