Well unless one has been on an entirely different planet for some time, one couldn't have missed the entire hype, excitement and the complete euphoria of AI. Everyone's talking about it and it is today’s most popular catch phrase. Is it going to change people, the industry, in a broader picture our lives and the world? Everyone should start thinking about it.
Whenever there is a buzzword, it is usually good to start off with a definition. But it might sound uncanny that the definition of AI has been constantly changing. Solving a problem, we don’t like calling it AI anymore. Scientist’s initially started working on complex math etc. They thought once they solve it the other things might follow. Which actually didn't happen. Speech recognition for instance is not addressed AI anymore but just SIRI. The AI era of invention continues, with more and more scientist’s pouring their souls in to it. About ten years ago AI was discovered by three north American scientists terming it Deep Learning. Deep learning is a domain which can take a large amount of data to predict and decide with superhuman accuracy. Deep learning becomes a core of AI.
When a lot of people think of AI, an impression of a terminator, super intelligent being which wipes out humanity is created.
Can humans and AI work together?
Will it solve all our problems?
The field of AI that solves all the human needs is related to artificial general Intelligence (AGI). Think about it, worry about it, plan for it. AGI may not change the world on the next 5 -6 years. What is going to change or in fact is already started to change is what is called as “Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)”, that is there baked in every phone. Every time you use google maps it is nothing but “ANI”.
Can this affect us?
“AI is going to be the new electricity that is going to transform the industry” says Andrew NG. AI is going to shape the century. It will make significant impact in everyone’s life, influences everyday aspects of our life. Experts believe that AI will usher as the fourth industrial revolution. An AI powered society provides better manufactured goods, health care is going to see a major boost. Computer Vision applied to oncology has made counting blood cells, detecting infections cheaper. Radiology has also seen profound improvement .AI powered language capabilities has improved people's communication, work and access to information better.
Companies are now going a step ahead in developing AI infrastructure. Countries like the USA and China are investing a lot and creating startups .AI is seen as a venture capital of the future. AI services are easily available like the cloud. Banks will see a great outcome in turning societies smart users. AI with technology has made the Chinese society cashless, in 2017, $18.8trillion has been transected cashless.
AI is more accurate than human beings. Many more things are within the scope of AI than what it was in the last 15 years. Sofia, the world’s first citizen robot can be attributed to the diligence and accomplishment of our scientists. The application of AI is such a fascinating thing that it has spread into every field.
AI’s part in combating the Pandemic
Just considering the COVID-19 pandemic AI algorithms have proved to be of great help in medical research, especially in the identification of spread and treatment of the virus. AI has shown great results in containing the Virus to various zones, to which Kerala stands as a great example. Various AI techniques coupled with IOT have been of great advantage.
With the Nation Digital Health Mission on the government’s agenda, AI will be in the driver’s seat in realizing the Prime Ministers aim for making health care accessible to everyone remotely.
On the flipside there are the questions that rise like “Is the battle between man and machine more hyped?”, “Is AI ethical?”. It is good in constraint and semi-constrained settings but in unconstrained settings like public safety and law enforcement it has to undergo a lot more development. Comments like “If we treat an AI system as a legal Person how do we attribute intent”. AI has no emotions like love, a simple case when AlphaGo defeated the world chess champion Cha Jem. Cha Jem lamented, AlphaGo didn’t feel any happiness from winning, certainly no desire to hug a loved one. Winning or losing creates no difference to it. AI is struggling with motor intelligence. The text classification is to turn better. It requires a lot of data and programming. Data being the fuel to run AI. A lot of problems like data security rise.
The big question is about unemployment. How can a company retrain its worker? Just think of the governments state in such skyrocketing unemployment. Human mind can analyze the information much faster. It might have disadvantages, but one cannot stop it, we got find how to deal with it. AI is going to take away lot of our routine jobs, but routines jobs are not we are about. It creates a lot of new jobs like social workers to make this transition, compassionate caregivers to give people more medical care to people. We need 10 times more teachers to survive and train to fulfill the needs of the coming technology. It turns to be a great source for creativeness so that artists, scientists, musicians can turn even more creative. AI will work with humans as analytical tools that humans can wrap their warmth around the high compassionate jobs Government should be a major user in massive mission mode, projects smart cities and areas where one can’t apply humans in a bigger picture:
- Academicians: AI researchers and developers
- Government: schemes to foster the growth
- Industry: embrace AI tech for social welfare
The above three sectors have a great role to play in the development of AI with AI gaining momentum, it is always necessary to think about it, plan for it, master it if not we are going be left behind. If we get behind in this particular race the 21st century is not going to be an Indian century. AI is here to liberate us from routine jobs and here to remind us what it is that makes us humans. so, let us choose to embrace AI and love one another.