Are we summoning the demon with AI ?
From IBM Watson to modern autonomous vehicles, the advances in Artificial intelligence is reshaping our lives as well as our future. In the simple sense Artificial intelligence is a bunch of code which gives a robot or an entity to think or act like human. Step by step advances in Machine learning algorithms , Neural networks and Deep learning methods lead to the development of advanced AI applications which are seeping to our daily lives. Still AI is in its development stage of infancy. We are far from developing a perfect AI in the sense an artificial intelligence capable of acting on its own by learning and with out relying on predefined behavior pattern. But this doesn’t guarantee safety of human race in a world of AI. It is only a matter of time and technology we are behind for developing an advanced AI. This is not just an exaggeration from fictitious novels or sci-fi movies like “I-Robot ”, “Ex machina” but it is the bitter truth scientists are afraid of. Professor Steven Hawking once said ,
“The development of full Artificial Intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
What we are afraid of is, an Intelligence, which can emulate human brain. It’s obvious that it is not easy to predict human mind, nature of action that a person will take in the next moment with respect to the current situation. We are living in a world where we can not trust or control our own race, Will we be safe with an artificial intelligence which imitates the human brain? The problem lies with the uncertainty of decision making procedure. As an example AI can take over and do something devastating. Application of AI in the field of military is destructive where people in-charge can loose control over the autonomous weapons. Loosing control over weaponry can lead to AI armed wars by AI taking decisions on its own will. The other way is the optimization procedure for a given goal can be devastating. Assume a autonomous vehicle given the goal of arriving at a destination with in a specific time. If AI doesn’t consider the speed limit the person can withstand, safety and road rules then arriving on the correct time is futile.
With time being we will handover each and every critical task on the hands of AI. As examples application of AI in stock trading, power plant managing, transportation, weather forecasting etc, pharmacological activities of chemical compounds, DNA sequencing etc. A single minor fault during analysis, recognizing patterns or prediction can lead to devastating outcomes like collapsing economy of an entire nation to threatening human safety. Here the problem lies, how much we will rely on AI.
The most debating argument for development of AI is extinction of human race due to emergence of AI where an intelligent species take human race. According to Elon Musk,
“With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like — yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon. Doesn’t work out”
Its natural every intelligent species tries take over another for it to dominate. So that AI will stand against human kind for it rule the world as the intelligent species. Either this will lead to the extinction of human kind or humans becoming slaves of machines, unable to surpass the exceeding intelligence.
The future is yet to come. Still we are far away from giving life to a perfect AI capable of replacing human brain. This is in-contrast to the evolution of modern human which took about 200,000 years where scientist predict that we will be able to develop an advanced AI with in next few decades. Right now we are in the control of the technology, so that panicking over an unseen future may deteriorate the advances in present technology.
