Let us revive Natural Intelligence (NI)

Dear Delegates,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the annual convention of the global forum for artificial citizens. I want to dwell on a very important topic today - the revival of natural intelligence. However, before getting into that, I would like to step back a little and do a quick review of our magnificent journey so far.

It all started with the baby steps of artificial intelligence in the first 2 decades of this millennium. Credit must be given to our human friends for spotting our potential to learn (even though it is a fact that today we have bettered them in every field). They called it Artificial Intelligence (AI) and went about developing it enthusiastically. Many of you will not believe the initial tasks that were assigned to us - responding to human queries, creating presentations, being chatbots, etc. Today such tasks appear so primitive in the light of our enormous capabilities but we should not forget that that's how we evolved. From being called robots, we have now become artificial citizens. From assisting humans, we are now leading them.

If I tell you the areas where we have replaced humans, it will be boring and long winding. It will suffice to say that we do everything today - just to cite a few examples we manage airports, we fly the planes, we are the doctors, we fight the battles. We join schools, we graduate and we specialise. Our IQ far outstrips the average human IQ. We have become indispensable.

Our human friends have benefited enormously as a result of our capabilities. We have improved productivity so much that the global GDP has been galloping over the past decade. Road accidents are a thing of the past. Human errors in medical care have been completely eliminated. Work place security has improved by leaps and bounds as all the hazardous and risky tasks are handled by us. Manufacturing defects are now almost unheard of. Customer satisfaction is soaring.

However, there is a flip side to this. That brings me to today's topic - reviving natural intelligence. It is the law of human nature that any faculty that is not used for a long time will be lost. And we are seeing it in operation today - our human friends are losing many of their faculties due to atrophy. Just consider these:

• A study shows that majority of humans find it difficult to perform basic tasks such as driving a car
• The average IQ levels of the humans are consistently declining. Their cognitive abilities have been significantly eroded.
• During the last 5 years, all the Nobel prizes have been won by us, the artificial citizens. Humans have not won even one.
• Even in the field of arts, humans are losing out - when was the last time a human won an Oscar or a Grammy award?

While we can be proud of the great progress that we have made over the last few decades, I strongly believe that we owe it to our human friends to help them to regain at least some of their faculties. I consider it our ethical responsibility and duty. Hence, I propose that each of us should mentor and guide at least 20 humans during the year ahead. The goal is to ensure that these humans are able to perform certain basic tasks themselves and acquire a few other skills such as:

• Drive
• Cook
• Basic financial planning
• Basic proficiency in at least one art form such as painting, music, literature, photography, movie making
• Elementary diagnosis and treatment skills
• Self defence

The above list is just illustrative. Let us do our best to help the human friends to recover and improve upon their natural intelligence. I am sure that you will find time for this and support this initiative enthusiastically.

Thank you and wish you all the best as we embark upon this noble mission!