Why Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Never Fully Replace Humans

- A Look At How Our Latest Creation Will Supplement Us, Not End Us. Is AI Really Our Last Creation?

With all this talk about artificial intelligence (AI), industrial revolution 4.0 and automation, there’s a sharp rise in the conversations about the ‘’inevitable redundancy of humans’’ across all job spectrums ranging from white, blue- and pink-collar jobs.

Adding to the mess is the pessimistic age-old talk of robots taking over the world. Whether it’s John Connor coming back from the future to warn us about terminators or Michio Kaku talking about how a robot will rise one day in a laboratory somewhere in 2029(how specific) and shall proclaim; ‘’I am aware’’ before exterminating us all. There’s much to talk about lately.

Let’s discuss something that’s less fun to talk about in the AI Tech Space;

Technological singularity not taking over. Ever.

Instead, I will be talking about how AI will radically alter the way we work forever, augmenting & complementing human capabilities. Not replacing them.

To begin with, every speculation of AI taking over humanity has the same problem, it looks at problems or challenges from a human perspective. Therefore, skewing our perception of two important variables; risk & motivation. And for what better reason was AI ever invented? To solve our problems of course. Hence, if we take this literally, this would mean that AI would be pursuing the same goals a human would due to the assumption that its motivations are shared with a human. This is still something far fetched and implored widely in sci-fi movies like I-Robot, where a robot is searching for meaning, purpose & independence with its own kind. Highly fictitious and unlikely but fun to debate.

Still, the question remains; Should we be concerned about the long-term risks to humanity from super intelligent AI? Were the Amish Right (Oh God, please no)?

According to Stuart Russel’s; ‘’Provably Beneficial Artificial Intelligence’’, the goal of artificial intelligence (AI) research has been to understand the principles underlying intelligent behaviour & to build those principles into machines that can then exhibit such behaviour. Several distinctions of what is ‘’intelligent’’ have been pursued in the early phase of research. Namely; emulation of human behaviour, the capability of logical reasoning in the forms of natural language processing, computer vision, legged locomotion, autonomous driving & pattern recognition to name a few. As of late, a consensus has emerged around the notion that a ‘’rational agent’’ which perceives & acts in order to maximally achieve its objectives is, therefore ‘’intelligent’’.

With every new breakthrough in AI due to the development of higher GPU, neural networks, deep learning and bigger more diverse data sets etc. Such developments have enabled AI to advance into capabilities which brings with it new potential & incentives to further research, resulting in a worthy cycle to continue pushing AI forward. The rate of progression isn’t slowing down either for research, Investment, startups developing AI systems & share of jobs requiring AI skills across the UK, U.S & Canada since the year 2000.

So, let’s look at some numbers telling us why AI is here to stay.

Major investment firms such as JP Morgan & Barclays are experiencing stronger trends of finding top grads to recruit, increasingly difficult. Big corporations are losing out on hiring talent out to startups.

If you can’t beat them, join them:

Corporations have instead chosen a smarter path. Funding or acquiring. Which isn’t slowing down either. As global superpowers compete against each other; the U.S & China stand at the top. Their Investors are 10Xing investments as they race towards the goal of Global AI supremacy. Data is the new oil & AI is the oil rig. Massive spikes in funding can be seen between 2013–2014 & 2016–2017.

Millennial things; Startups:

Looking at the number of startups in the U.S alone and the rate of adoption for AI systems, it’s quite evident that this is the new ‘’bandwagon’’ every business is trying to attain as a competitive edge. Hence, going forward with survivability would mean evolving into a data/AI-driven organization for almost any entity currently.

The graphs below shows a clearer picture in terms of the labour committed and annual labour change- a precursor of what really is going on in the global AI labour market and the direction global competitive economies are headed.

Humans love to dwell on the idea of robots taking over. Science fiction movies we make constantly insist that the line between artificial intelligence and humans is a very thing one. AI is inherently about replicating the human mind and allowing us to interact with one of our own. At the current state of technology, this depends solely on the matter of training the machines the right way. Currently, AI companies are achieving this by ‘’Supervised learning’’. Whilst ‘’Unsupervised learning’’ is the eventual next goal, machines tasked with identifying, classifying and recognizing objects, humans, animals or even sports logos must be fed with large and diverse data sets of for example sports logos to be able to accurately identify sports logos of all shapes & sizes in video or images with near 100% accuracy.

Since the 1950s, scientists and researchers use one standard of measure to deduce whether a computer is truly artificially intelligent; The Turing Test.

Developed by English mathematician, computer scientist and philosopher born in 1912; Alan Turing came up with a simple test. Whereby in a blind setting, a human cannot tell the difference between a chatbot and a human, the AI passes. Similarly, if the AI can accurately identify objects in an image as a human, it also passes. Despite one-widely challenged case from 2014, technology has seen innovation after innovation. After all, this is the industrial revolution 4.0 where AI finds itself on centre stage. Nevertheless, there is still a likely plateau on the horizon which might prevent AI from reaching the mountain top. Then again this is also widely argued. Who knows what’s really to come? Does Elon Musk know something that we don’t when he claimed; ‘’AI will be mankind’s last invention’’? What’s certain right now is the fundamental issue of AI’s inability to learn like a human. A key differing factor between the two; how humans learn about the world around them compared to how machines do.

According to Bart Selman, a computer scientist at Cornell University;

‘’Intelligence relies on the way we view the world as humans, and the way we think about this world.’’

Due to the AI’s inability to learn about the world we do, it struggles with some of the most basic worldviews of the human brain. Not being able to see the world with an abstract sense of nature, creativity, inspiration, reasoning or standards of virtue.

‘’We are very good at gathering data and developing algorithms to reason with that data. But that reasoning is only as good as the data, which for the AI we have now, is one step removed from reality’’

- Peter Norvig, Director of research at Google.

So, this ties in with the fundamental core reasoning of why AI will never & can never fully replace humans; ‘’The Human Experience’’. We can all agree that it is so unique it cannot be replicated. This does make plenty of sense. As the human mind, itself is a complex enigma in many respects, despite all that we know about it. It cannot be downloaded or replicated.

Artificial Intelligence can’t compete with the human brain. Since we are the designers of AI, we don’t know enough or all that there is to know about the human brain itself. AI can’t learn like a human, listen like a human, act or react like a human because it’s creators still don’t know what it means to be a human. As cliché as that just sounded — A machine can never truly replicate a human in the way it might process, react and adapt with the environment around it compared to a human.

How we execute tasks and improve processes intelligently with the help of AI is a concept more credible and worthy of deliberation. A productivity revolution is on the way because inputs are getting ''smarter''.

The Industrial Revolution & the advent of the internet didn’t result in unemployment (at least not permanently) or apocalyptic Armageddon. Instead, we created more jobs & allowed new technologies to re-invent ourselves. Making us more productive. Disruptive technologies improve our lives and allow us to execute our jobs better. Even if it means reducing job categories in an economy. Economists call this ''reducing deadweight loss''- AI Technology will allow us to maximize surplus and utility for both the consumer and producer.

This is the heart of the argument, AI will not replace us- It will make us enhance us. Making us superhuman. .

AI will free us from repetitive tasks

Automated factories with robots on the assembly lines are already dominating the blue-collar labour market. Tasks as menial as picking up object A from B to C thousands of times a day are already being occupied by robots with the ability to perceive the environment's dimensions accurately with error rates lower than a human can ever achieve. Robots don’t get tired, don't ask for medical leave and can work longer than any human. Hence, making our industries more productive. And rightly so, why should humans be doing menial, repetitive and mundane tasks which make us less productive?

AI will enable us to focus on being more Human

For Instance, in sales, it takes incredible finesse to do well. It’s the most basic order and is inherently an order executed with human functions. Salespeople spend incredible amounts of time qualifying prospects, following up and updating CRMs instead of dedicating their time to the human interaction & building rapport. Not everyone has a natural knack for selling and might not be as productive as they should be. Adding AI, into the function makes the job more efficient and easier because the sales force gets to dedicate new-found time towards studying and learning from high performers. AI takes care of unproductive functions so salespeople can focus on the essentials like listening, asking questions, consulting and creatively finding solutions to problems.

Inspiration & Creativity will be ever so important.

Would you purchase a painting drawn by an AI engine or a Human drawn painting inspired by a dream? I guess the answer lies in that fact that it’s inconceivable to imagine; Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings losing value business because people started buying more from a robot.

AI Creates New Industries & Jobs

‘’Social media jobs’’ never existed 10 years ago. Today they earn on par with the best technology workers. The 18th-century story of the invention ‘’Spinning Jenny’’ is a great reminder of how history is repeating itself. Workers in the spinning profession were so alarmed at losing their jobs that they broke into the inventor’s house and smashed his machines. Eventually, they had to re-train find more suitable employment and accepted the ‘’Spinning Jenny’’.

This led to economies of scale due to mass production and cheaper prices enabling the textile industry to expand. Today we have cheap, mass-produced cloth because of the foundation laid by such technologies. On the contrary of what people feared, sure they lost their jobs at the price of enjoying more affordable textiles, higher standard of living, higher productivity and the industry expanding overall due to more uses of thread as it became cheaper. Considering the improved living standard due to technological disruption, shouldn’t we ditch pessimism?

Here’s what AI is already doing:

• · Improved elderly care- As demographic trends are overwhelming the market, AI software is helping take up a share of the supply needed to service the care industry.
• · AI Enabled Robots- Taking over menial & monotonous jobs, especially within the blue-collar industry.
• · Efficient Money Management- AI software is helping brokerages, investment houses analyze vast swathes of data quickly & accurately to apply the best investment strategies.
• · Unbiased Law- Helping protect citizens by enabling effective & unbiased law enforcement.

What Does the Future Hold?

‘’Techno-pessimists’’ and notable commentators like Bill Gates, cognitive science professor at the University of NY; Gary Marcus, Elon Musk & Stephen Hawking to name a few have warned that sometime in the near future, AI will learn by itself and achieve ‘’singularity’’. It will become individual self aware at that stage- something ethicists debate widely as AI would need to take into account societal values, moral and ethical considerations. Virginia Dignum (2017) states in her work; ‘’ Responsible Artificial Intelligence: Designing AI for Human Values’’ that as AI systems replace many people in traditional jobs, it’s necessary to rethink the meaning of ‘’work’’ as the character of jobs will change. Developments in autonomy and learning are rapidly enabling AI systems to decide & act without direct human control, making the environment more dynamic with situations in which consequences of the AI’s decision may not always be possible to predict or direct. A plausible fear. Although being a risk to human values, it brings with it enormous potential to improve the lives of many ensuring human rights to all unbiasedly. However, this will be realized and depends on us, the creators of AI.

In sum, AI has focused on systems that are better at making decisions which is not the same as making better decisions. ‘’No matter how excellently an algorithm maximizes, and no matter how accurate its model of the world, a machine’s decisions may be ineffably stupid, in the eyes of an ordinary human, if its utility function is not well aligned with human values.’’- Stuart Russell's; ''Provably Beneficial Artificial Intelligence''.

AI may replace some jobs but will eliminate what economists call ‘’deadweight loss’’(Inefficiencies) and push the envelope of productivity in the global economy to greater heights. Disrupting the way, we work. This will give birth to new jobs making the work done by humans more thoughtful, rewarding and even fulfilling. AI will make us superhuman. Sure, there might be friction in the transition but we’ll get on with it, evolve and adapt. We always have.

This isn’t the end of mankind, it’s the start of a work revolution. Are you rightly positioned for it?