TO ERR IS MACHINE

First published in Campaign ME

Since the dawn of time, human beings have been consistently attempting to impress themselves by creating new thresholds to surpass, always vigilant, always restless, never sated with their state of being. Ours was never a species to conform, and though we may not all be playing the innovation game, quite a few of us, even in our routine comforts, are consumed with the urge to outdo ourselves.

Where an artist would seek a brushstroke to evoke the most potent of emotions, or a poet the words to captivate readers, those in my position are looking for the innovation that would herald the coming of the future. Ours is a business that has undergone some of the greatest influxes with a deluge of changes and processes. Where once I looked to decipher media or build a robust network of relations, data is now the source of my professional inspiration and the make-it-or-break-it factor that when employed optimally grants me the foresight to see beyond the apparent.

After all, the skilful utilisation of data is critical for success, and though humans are still inherently at the core of every business or venture, it’s the machines that are handling the information and translating it into complex algorithms. We are simply incapable at the moment of absorbing the overwhelming amount of data surrounding us to build an actual consumer landscape.

People today are connected at virtually all times through a myriad of devices, and it is this shift in consumer behaviour that emphasises the importance of data and its potential in not only presenting consumer trends and interests but defining them moving onward. Therefore, artificial intelligence was a necessary part of our evolution and not one established to merely compensate for our organic limitations.

No sooner had we climbed over the AI barrier, however, barely just peeking beyond its surface, we were already pondering what the next step would be. Scientists and engineers are still experimenting with AI to allow it to reach its full potential by having a computer possess the same cognition as that of a human, yet there is already talk, and has been for the better part of the past decade, of artificial superintelligence (ASI): the ability to surpass humans.

Though most experts agree that societies have not yet reached the point of artificial superintelligence (ASI) yet, ponder this: what is the limit of such intelligence and who’s to identify its start and end points? Will there ever be a finite capacity where we will concede to the technology and refuse to go even further? Sophia the robot may have taken her first steps in early 2018, but the world of replicants envisioned by Philip K. Dick is still a ways from now, if it will ever come to be.