Shifting the Conversation About AI
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, often gets a lot of bad press. Some of the greatest minds of our generation from Stephen Hawking to Elon Musk have sounded alarms in regards to AI’s impending takeover of our way of life. This type of rhetoric stokes fears about AI and its capabilities, effectively trying to scare people off the very idea of AI. Detractors posit that if we embrace AI it will outright replace us in nearly every aspect, leaving us adrift and without purpose. These fears are generally unfounded and tend to disregard AI’s true purpose as a tool to assist humanity in achieving greatness.
The Myth
For many, the fear that AI will one day replace them in their job isn’t a crazy idea. After all, automation has reduced the number of laborers necessary over the years in just about every industry from agriculture to the auto and manufacturing industry. These fears are intensified when AI experts go on nationally syndicated news shows proclaiming that AI has the potential to replace 40% of all jobs as they currently exist.
Another factor causing general unease towards the capabilities of AI is that advanced technology like AI has already been shown to be able to beat us at our own games. First, Deep Blue beat the legendary Garry Kasparov in a competitive game of chess, then the computer Libratus took on professional Texas hold’em players, and now most recently Google’s DeepMind has been able to unseat some of the best Starcraft II players in the world. This unsettles people because these are generally tasks and skills considered incredibly difficult to master strategically, taking humans many years. Yet the machines and programs we build can master them in a fraction of that time.
It isn’t even just humanity’s jobs and skills that AI is poised to take over. Even creativity, one of the things that set people apart from other animals, is apparently being threatened by AI. An AI developed by a French trio calling themselves Obvious recently created a unique portrait after being asked to analyze thousands of portraits. While the image itself may look unremarkable to some, at auction the piece painted by an AI fetched a handsome $430,000.
The Reality
While all of the apocalyptic articles pertaining to AI’s inevitable takeover of humanity certainly do well in garnering clicks, the reality of what AI is capable of is just as exciting. Long-haul truck drivers might be concerned about self-driving vehicles powered by AI taking their jobs, but most AI currently works to enhance and assist humans in their job duties. The reality of the matter is that AI lacks the human touch and people will always have the advantage of being able to experience the empathy and critical thinking required to make certain decisions AI cannot.
One main difference between human intelligence and Artificial Intelligence is humanity’s ability to think and create unprompted. AI works best when performing simple, repetitive tasks that have mountains of data to feed the AI. This reliance on data is one of the reasons that humans will always have an edge on AI. While AI is reliant on data to see and identify patterns, something it is remarkable at doing, humans can learn infinite patterns and even develop new ones on their own without any outside influence. This is the real creative, strategic, and critical thinking that AI lacks. Humans will always be more imaginative and emotionally cognisant than their AI counterparts will be.
This is just one reason why we should embrace AI going forward. While AI deals with menial tasks and AI bots provide useful insights, humans will have more flexibility on the job. AI isn’t poised to take over all of humanity’s jobs but instead exists to make them infinitely easier and more productive. Though some will always continue to fear AI and how it will affect how people not only work but interact with each other, the simple fact is that AI is here to stay.
AI Is Our Future
While this technology already exists today and AI is implemented in a huge number of different industries from manufacturing and education to healthcare and government, the roof is still not within sight when it comes to what AI might one day achieve. One of the most exciting fields that AI will have a serious impact on is that of healthcare and medicine.
Soon, AI will be the go-to technology for training medical professionals, assisting in complex surgeries, and even taking the lead on emergency management and communication. Eventually, AI will become advanced enough to develop vaccines and new drugs independently when given a set of parameters and an end goal. Disasters will be quickly handled thanks to AI’s ability to predict the damage ahead of time and appropriately allocate resources. Diagnoses of ailments will become infinitely easier with the assistance of AI diagnosticians.
The true crowning achievement of AI may one day indeed be in completely changing the way humanity operates. This change will not be through a hostile takeover but through the facilitation of a near-utopian society in which humans work far less, live much longer, and are generally given much more free time. With the freeing up of so much time, humanity will be able to focus on more esoteric pursuits such as art and literature, leisure and recreation.
AI isn’t something to be feared. Instead of taking jobs, AI is far more likely to make jobs easier through a collaborative effort. In a nutshell, AI is something to embrace today and look forward to tomorrow.
