Artificial Intelligence is Light Years away from Replacing Humans Entirely

It all started with a disruption of my home internet access the other day. Since I do a lot of work from home this was more to me than just a petty little nuisance. So I called tech-support hoping to receive quick help.

It did not come as a surprise to me that my call was answered by a robot. Machine calls have been a reality for at least a decade. Yet I can’t help but feel no progress has been made since they were first introduced. Only back then people did not call it artificial intelligence.

The urge to speak to a human being as quickly as possible when you are in a call with a machine remains the same nevertheless. And once you actually do get to speak with a human worker, you are tempted to blow off some steam to get the frustration off your chest.

Many of us have made similar experiences, I am sure. Yet I am not so sure whether we all learned the same lesson. And the lesson is: AI is still light years away from replacing humans entirely.

To be fair, I know that I am referring to a very special example. Language recognition via a mobile phone - there are many things that can go wrong. However, the point is that organizations are confident enough to put this kind of technology in front of their customers hopefully knowing the restrictions of AI.

That said, many AI pundits are doing a bad job of putting things in perspective. The common notion in way too many public debates seems to be that AI can do anything. But I for one tend to believe that it is critical to point out that we need to establish proper ways for a sustained man-machine collaboration or else AI will be the next big failure.

In that sense I am ticked off by the fact that every time you bring this up some AI advocates are tempted to label you as “backwards”. I believe that AI can and will be not only a great success, but a major relief if we find the right balance to deal with it.

Yet transparency will be vital in the months to come; in other words it will be a make or break factor. Because many of the campaigns that would have us believe that AI can do anything have actually succeeded. However, this has spurred law makers interest and the discussion is now one in the political realm.

Accordingly, many stakeholders are calling for regulations that will ensure ethical use of AI. So it is obvious that fear fed by public pressure is a driving motive here. And that is not the only tech issue in which lawmakers are pressured to bring about some far reaching regulations that may curtail technology and the market.

Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks are struggling with the need to enforce proper data privacy regulations and control the abuse of their platforms. Far too long they may have allowed for intransparent activities to take advantage of their platforms.

And that may be something that can backfire on the entire tech industry. It provokes skepticisms from lawmakers, users and consumers alike. Consequently, the response may be a drastic sweep of regulations. That is if tech providers do not act first and stop the frenzy over what technology - including AI - can and will be able to do.

Above all, AI is an opportunity and not a threat. But we need to be transparent what it can do and what it cannot do - especially in an industrial context. Process automation is costly, time consuming, and certainly not as easy as pie. Machine-man collaboration can deliver massive results yet we need to empower human workers to allow for that - and that is the catch: AI needs to serve human needs - and if it does it will generate opportunities rather than hardships.

To be continued!