Artificial Intelligence: Did we summon a demon with this?

 

Artificial Intelligence: Did we summon the demon with this?

July 9,1941. Cryptologist Alan Turing and his team ‘Hut 8’ changed the course of World War Two when they found the weak spot in the German Enigma encryption machine, and that weak spot was the usage of the words ‘Weather’ and ‘Heil Hitler’ in the morning messages of German U- boat submarines,which enabled Turing to easily decipher Nazi messages. The Bombe machine,which did all the work here,may be rightfully called as the world’s first Artificial Intelligence ,since it used the rotors and discs collectively to produce the Enigma code and effectively decipher it.

From that legendary day in 1941 to the present day, Artificial Intelligence has taken a big leap. It’s present everywhere our eyes roll. Our cars have A.I. based infotainment systems, our offices use A.I. to effectively manage workforce and data. With the advent of Internet based Entertainment ,A.I. has literally taken over our lives. Among all this, our Leaderships wonder if A.I. is a threat to human existence, and in words of Elon Musk,"We summoned the demon with A.I."

Let's not get worked up over his opinion and start raging on social media. Let's try to understand why he said that.Because, when Mr. Musk says those words,which no one expects him to, you know the stuff is serious.

Let's start with the basics. Artificial Intelligence,the term coined by John McCarthy,is simply a human designed complex system that imitates,recreates and sometimes evaluates human intelligence to produce a fruitful outcome. Often called machine learning, a typical A.I. evaluates its environment to maximize its success. A.I. not only produces a desired outcome,but evaluates the outcome itself,to

rationalize further processes, just like a human brain.

It's clear that A.I. is an extremely advanced scientific study,and recent advancements have even increased its resemblance and superiority ,in some fields, to human brain functioning.

A.I. first shocked the world when in 1997 'Deep Blue' beat Garry Kasparov in a chess match. And from then on,the feats didn't end. In 2011 in the quiz show Jeopardy! ,IBM's question answering system Watson beat the two reigning champions Brat Rutter and Ken Jennings. In March 2016, AlphaGo won 4 out of 5 games of Go in a match with Go champion Lee Sedol, becoming the first computer Go-playing system to beat a professional Go player without handicaps.Bloomberg reports suggest that in 2015,the number of Artificial Intelligence projects in Google rose from 'sporadic' in 2012 to a staggering 2700 projects.Now everyone wanted a slice of this cake. Microsoft's Skype was given an inbuilt  system to translate the language during call. Facebook developed many such A.I. systems,like the one that describes images to blind people,one to segregate content and maintain vigilance over hate and spam,and also the infamous one which reportedly uses personal data of users,and manipulate user feed and advertisements to profit partner companies. We have reached to that point in A.I. technology that we have it in our phones now! Be it the Google Assistant, Siri for Apple devices,Bixby for Samsung. And let's not forget 'household' A.I. systems Alexa and Google Home. Even in the automotive sector,A.I. has picked up pace,with many companies developing A.I. based self driving vehicles. Tesla's autopilot systems is one of the best examples one could give right now.

So the question,if its so widely used and benefits a large array of people,why is it under criticism.

Well,

Exactly.

The whole concern about A.I. systems actually point to the fact that humans are becoming lazier day by day. What can be performed by human hands themselves,they want machines to do it. And on top of that the machines need more care and maintenance,hereby making the work required on them multiplied by x,than required on the original task.

But that's all about human nature,however,the issue in concern over here is the effect of A.I. over the whole society ,which in recent times has been evaluated to be pretty bad.

In recent years China came into headlines following its announcement that it's working on a Social Credit System ,which will use Artificial Intelligence to evaluate a persons Social Score by keeping vigil over their actions and behavior. A low score may even mean total ban on travel and entertainment.

Guess one could say that after this system is implemented,Privacy wouldn't exist,just like the Tianmen Square Massacre (oops!).

Wonder what JinPing's up-to these days.

Talking of China ,one is always reminded of military,and thats what we are going to talk about next.

Now, hardly anyone reading this,wouldn't have heard of the world famous Hollywood series Terminator. Skynet,the A.I. developed as an autonomous defense network,assumes control of itself and 'terminates' a significant percentage of human population. All this might send some chills down your spine,but what if I told you that this 'fiction' could turn into reality any day ? Well, autonomous targeting systems are in development and A.I. based missiles and rockets are already in use,which nevertheless contribute to this feared reality.

Talking about machines taking control,an important aspect to be taken into consideration is the fact that A.I. literally means Intelligence,and humans themselves are the best example of the fact that intelligence knows no bounds. Let's take a few examples.

Recently Facebook reportedly shut down one of its A.I. systems. The official cause still unclear,inside reports suggest that the A.I. ,"Developed a language of its own,to interact with other system without human acknowledgement". As scary as that sounds,it could be a reality.

Google A.I. came into news recently when it reportedly tagged two African origin humans as gorillas. Google claims that it was a system failure,however,no one knows for sure whether Google's claims are true or if the A.I. developed this racial Bias own its own,by replicating common human behavior.

And of course the list wouldn't end without our housekeeper Alexa, which reportedly stores human interactions and common behavioral traits to 'provide better service'. That better be true Amazon,because Alexa knows a lot of personal stuff.

So,to sum it up,yeah A.I. is eating up human jobs and that's something that will hit us back in the future. But on a larger scale,A.I. systems are learning,developing themselves and who knows,they may one day outsmart us.

So, a question is raised, "If A.I. is preparing itself,are we hopeless? Can't we do anything?"

Of course you can. A.I is intelligence,and even though Intelligence is a core component of a human,it is still heavily influenced by our consciousness and morals. But as common as this fact is, the sad reality of our world is,these two factors are rapidly disappearing.

In words of Emile Durkheim:

"Man is a moral being,only because he lives in a society.

 Let the sociability disappear and the morals will disappear with it"

Vedant signing out.