Artificial Intelligence: Ying and Yang

To reason whether AI (Artificial Intelligence) is leading humanity towards making this planet a better place to live or a place which is full of disaster, we need to understand what is Artificial Intelligence(AI). AI is study of “intelligent agents"- any device programmed to perceive its surroundings and take appropriate actions to successfully achieve the goals. AI has already started transforming the nature of almost everything which is connected to human life e.g. employment, economy, communication, warfare, privacy, security, ethics, healthcare etc. The scope and potential of AI is limitless in the futuristic world and we may find most of the dangerous and risky jobs of mankind taken over by robots, performing par- excellence.

For example, in healthcare industry, robots are being programmed to support and in some cases even perform a surgery. AI has the scope of identifying diseases much better, faster and be a boon in medical research. Few reputed vehicle companies such as Tesla; have already come up with auto-pilot cars controlled by AI, that can run from source to destination, negotiating hurdles en-route taking instant decisions on their own to ensure safe journey of its passengers. Undoubtedly, the complete evolution of AI can open up a vast ocean of opportunities but some scientists have shown concerns and fear that a completely developed AI would perform functions beyond human control. The fear of uncontrollable AI could turn into reality if its development is not subjected to certain regulations, checks and balances. Taking in account the current scenario, AI are scheduled to take on most of the middle- class tasks, making millions of people jobless, a repetition of Industrial Revolution which swept over the world bringing great famines and economic depressions, initially, before it became the engine of development and economic growth.

The great ‘Theoretical Physicist Stephen Hawking' had told BBC in 2014-" the development of full Artificial Intelligence could spell the end of the human race". Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Automobile Company, famously compared work on AI to “summoning the demon", stating -"I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence.....I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish.” His apprehensions were confirmed in 2017 when Facebook has to shut down a controversial chatbot experiment that saw two AIs develop their own language to communicate. The researchers at the Facebook AI Research Lab (FAIR) found that they had deviated from script and were inventing new phrases without any human input. In 2016, ‘Tay’, an artificial intelligence chatterbot that was originally released by Microsoft Corporation began to post inflammatory and offensive tweets through its Twitter account, forcing Microsoft to shut down the service only 16 hours after its launch.

The worst nightmare of the future would be unleashing an 'Ultron' which would eradicate humanity to save Earth. Even though it give an "Avengers" vibe, its the thought and a threat altogether. Man playing the role of a creator could be a dangerous game, since the human intelligence is still unknown at many stages of complexity. Each and everything we have till date is a product of intelligence and its evolution, so amplifying our human intelligence with artificial intelligence has the potential of serving human civilization like never before only and only if we manage to keep the technology beneficial. The concept of "Humanoids" has been in discussion since early ages and has expanded its reigns to the inventions of robots in human shape referred to as "Humanoid Robots". This has impacted various aspects of different fields for which the invention took place and also has raised the concerns over the stability. Knowing the existing concept, a community of scientist have proposed an idea of merging or installing AI into the human body, to enhance the human brain capacity which could be the creation of a much safer and evolved civilization for future.