IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE THE NEXT SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION?

Necessity is the mother of inventions.’ The saying is quite popular not because it was said by a wise prophet or any sage but rather the fact that it has been proven a matter of fact in most cases. So, is the case with the latest technological advancement — the advancements towards future and the advancements towards creating the world a better place.

The vibrant world that we live in today is vivaciously changing by leaps and bounds in the race of technological innovations and development. The 21st century is literally the era of technological revolution as it not only has made commendable breakthroughs in the makings of a computer but rather left the world awestruck by the innovation of some marvelous achievements like the Artificial Intelligence.

Human beings are undoubtedly the most intelligent living beings. Human beings are characterized by their myriad capacities of logic, understanding, learning, creativity, self-awareness, planning and problem solving. Apart from all these features, one of the most notable feature that the human race exhibits are the act of curiosity. It is the very act of curiosity that drives the human race constantly towards new achievements and advancements in technology. The same nature of inquisitiveness of human over one’s own capabilities made them prepare devices that could were logical, devices with learning capabilities — the devices with intelligence, and thus the term artificial intelligence was introduced.

Artificial intelligence, often fancied as AI is in way a creation of the humans by the humans themselves. It is the addition of an extraordinariness to the existing machinery world of monotonous sequentially functioning computation based gadgets. The extraordinariness is the capability of machines to learn as the human beings do by observing the situations around and to evaluate and decide the correct decision amongst the choices to be made. In recent days, the field of Artificial Intelligence is in the rise and the intellectuals in the field of computer are continuously brainstorming hard to make it more of a marvel to the world.

The necessity is always the mother of all inventions, as stated earlier, the build of the concept and the idea of the Artificial Intelligence has not merely been a fantasied dream come true for human. It has rather been a requirement fulfillment as it was introduced with a view to make the human life a lot more easy and efficient than existing. Introducing the machine learning, understanding and decision making capabilities to the once regarded just as a simple calculating machine, not only broadened the capability of the computing world but rather assisted the human race in making the world a better place to live in.

Improving the life standard of all has all been the motive of all technological inventions, and so was that for artificial intelligence. What we have achieved as a result of its invention is however unexpectedly fantastic. It has upgraded the capability of machine world by a huge milestone as human can now more efficiently do the works that would require the scarcest resource of all, the human resource.

The field of AI is a multiverse in itself. The sector is quite a broad one, each type being equally a marvelous invention to the world. The fields involved in the term AI range from simple robotics to complicated neural networks. The various categories include Machine learning, Natural language processing, Speech recognitions, Expert systems, Vision controls, Biometrics, Evolutionary Computations like genetic algorithms and programming to the complicated field of neural networks like brain modeling. (www.cs.bham.ac.uk)

With AI on its speedy emergence, now the question that arises is ‘Is AI really a major breakthrough to solve the unsolved??’. The answer is quite simple. It is the evident fact that AI has brought a revolution to the tech industry in the recent years and has in fact realized the many different dreams that human beings once could only afford to dream of. What had been a fantasy has changed into reality and this has only been possible due to the evolution of AI.

With the use of AI, what would have taken the dedication and diligence of a thousand manpower would require just some few robotic automation machines performing their jobs with as much efficacy and accuracy as human’s desire and even more. The ability of the AI to replicate the actions and decisions of humans overcoming the human shortcomings like fatigue, emotions and the limited time make it even more powerful than the creator, the human itself. Human beings like consistency; the human nature needs a break in between of payload of tasks which often increases the time requirement of the task. No human task offers 100% efficiency, however with the use of AI, automated tasks are performed in the rapid rate, without the wastage of time or even the resources. This not only improves the cost-basis and potentials for different companies but also improves the overall productions rate of the human race.

Apart from the production scenario, the AI techs have also been a great innovation when it comes to life productivity. These days the use of smart tech devices and gadgets in home, ranging from a small smart LED system to smart washing machines and refrigerator has made a paradigm shift in the lifestyle of people. In today’s world, the smartphones rule the people’s mind; the advanced features of smart phones like smart touch, voice recognition, biometric sensors, GPS navigations etc are all the boons of AI that make the smart phones popular in today’s generation.

Moreover, days aren’t that far when we’ll all be having smart houses with home automation systems that does most of the tasks on itself for humans without even human interference. Recently, the owner of the renowned social media company Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has also revealed his project on home based AI assistant called JARVIS (source:Mark Zuckerberg’s blog) (as fancied by the marvel movie Iron Man) which is designed to be the next family member in the house assisting the human with much more productivity and home management.

Artificial intelligence, as the name itself suggests, is really an advanced system. It can serve to do the things which human beings have difficulty in doing. Be it in space exploration or the exploration in nuclear level of minuteness, the use of AI has always exceled the apex of human expectations and is continuing to do so. The AI development has also left a major factor of improvement in the field of accessibility for the disabled. Various kinds of assistive devices for improving the conditions and life conditions of many who were once left hopeless are all possible due to assistive AI supports. The prosthetic arm, voice recognition system, screen reader devices, driverless cars are the good examples with great potentiality of serving a major breakthrough in the field of science and technology for being a complete life changer for the disabled ones. Latest focuses of the AI sector on high techs like iris detection based mobility, autonomous wheelchairs, text to speech devices are on the rise and are highlighted to be the turnovers for accessibility issues.

Furthermore, several kinds of congenital and motor neuron diseases which were once termed as incurable too have found their path of cure due to the development of several technologies like genetic programming and neural network advancements. These are all the major contributions made to the health sector due to the AI sector development.

Despite all the pros of the Artificial Intelligence to prove it as a major innovation in the tech world made so far, some groups of intellectuals like Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates etc, still have claimed it to be the biggest possible threat to the humans themselves if not taken wisely.

“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” This statement said by Stephen Hawking in December 2014 clearly explains the threat of AI over humanity. Creating something that has the capacity beyond the innovator itself is like cutting the branch of the tree on which one is rested upon. It is all about codes that machines follow, the combinations of 0s and 1s to be exact. A single alteration on those bits can make a huge impact. The trust and dependency of human beings on such machines for highly precise, and risky processes that may involve the lives of people is just not acceptable and a great stupidity in most cases.

In most cases, the use of AI is just not practical to be executed. For example: the concept of driverless cars in all cities is practically impossible until all the vehicles are designed the same and the rules and regulations are precisely followed. Thus, no matter how much a progress AI field can bring to change the society, there must always be a way to check and balance it.

Thus, in an incomparably advanced way, the development of sector of Artificial Intelligence has been taken as the future of all technologies in the recent days. Now, it is upon we human beings and our principal intelligence on whether to take Artificial Intelligence to a new level of advancement for a better future and how. It completely relies on the intelligence of we the human beings as a whole on how we choose to make the artificial intelligence a major breakthrough on changing the world.

Zerone is an undergrad publication at I.O.E, Pulchowk focusing on People (their creative side, their thoughts, their lives) and Technology (the new, the old, everything).

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