Artificial Intelligence: Boon or bane?

When the 21st century began, we spoke of how Artificial Intelligence would soon replace blue-collared workers and take over that space, leaving a susceptible job market. While that prediction was true, nobody saw the advent of AI taking over legal jobs, managerial jobs, and even reporting jobs.

This leaves us to the question: Will artificial intelligence take over the world?

The answer is a double-edged sword. If we don’t discount these factors, then expect to see a Terminator-like situation in the future. It could be a violent scenario, as an experiment recently showed. Google’s DeepMind did a series of experiment on how AI would react to hostile situations. In the experiments, it was shown that the AI-powered robots resorted to violence and attacked other robots in order to survive.

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, and many other big names in science and technology have recently expressed concern in the media about the risks posed by AI, joined by many leading AI researchers. The fundamental question asked by these minds is that if AI has the potential to become more intelligent than any human, then there is no way to predict what the future holds, especially if they end up ‘outsmarting’ us.

As the scientists say, humans control the planet, not because we’re the strongest, fastest or biggest, but because we’re the smartest. If we’re no longer the smartest, are there chances of us being dethroned?

But that is not to say that AI should not exist at all. Artificial Intelligence can be implemented in search and rescue operations, quick research in legal cases, aiding doctors in complex medical procedures to reduce the risk of human error, etc.

People may also use AI to tackle dangerous jobs. Welding, well known for producing toxic substances, intense heat, and ear-splitting noise, can now be outsourced to robots in most cases.

Also, as experts suggest, AI could also use big data to identify trends and use that information to come up with solutions to the world’s biggest problems, such as climate change.

And if humans are smart, then we can prevent a fictional Skynet-like situation from the Terminator series, and actually use AI to our advantage.