Will robots take over us? The dark side of AI!

If you aren't living under a rock, you must have heard the term AI brief for artificial intelligence. Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates all have warned humanity about the perilous impact that it can have on the whole of human civilization. Humanity right now is splitted between two ideologies. One ideology perceives artificial intelligence as a cause of the total annihilation of human species while the other ideology refers to AI as the biggest leap of science in the history of mankind. And both of these sects are true. According to Elon Musk

“If AI has a goal and humanity just happens to be in the way, it will destroy humanity as a matter of course without even thinking about it…It’s just like, if we’re building a road and an anthill just happens to be in the way, we don’t hate ants, we’re just building a road.”

What is ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence in a machine. The end goal of this field is to create a machine that can think, act and solve problems like humans. A human child learns to speak, walk, act, eat by observing his environment. But the upbringing of these machines is solely dependent on the bytes of data that is being programmed inside their system.

There is a subset of this field known as Machine learning or MI. In this field the programmer doesn't have to give specific directions to the machine, instead, it just provides the data and the machine will learn itself what to do with the provided data.

Tesla's Self-driving cars, Alexa, and Google maps are some household examples of AI. We have achieved so much from AI and still, we haven't even scratched the surface of its true potential.

THE TERRIFYING IMPACTS OF AI

AI is just like a kid with access to nukes. AI has immense power but no common sense. It is true that AI is programmed to facilitate humans but its methods frighten many scholars. Let's get a gist of what is happening in the domain of AI.

The primary function of AI is to concise the data and limit the work of humans as little as possible. At a first glance, it seems exciting. But once you dig deep, you will realize that humans are creating a demon that even they themselves can't control.

WHO WILL BE AT THE TOP OF PYRAMID?

The AI which we perceive right now is in its initial stages. Right now it can perform only one task at a time. So humans have the upper hand in this dimension. But unlike humans, AI isn't chained down by emotions, tiredness, demotivation, doubts and other physical liabilities. It is a sheer intelligence with maximum focus on finding the solution. So at the moment it may be able to accomplish only one task at a time, but it executes it with such elegance that all the experts in that specific field combined don't stand a chance against it.

AlphaZero, an AI created by Google sibling Deepmind, was just provided with the rules of games. It didn't have any kind of other human intervention. In just 4 hours by playing against itself, it beat the previous best chess-playing system in a 100 match chess game. In just 24 hours, it achieved a superhuman level of play in Chess, Shogi and Go. According to former world champion Garry Kasparov
“We have always assumed that chess required too much empirical knowledge for a machine to play so well from scratch, with no human knowledge added at all.”

AlphaZero was able to produce information. AI snatches the throne from humans of being the only creative entity in this world.

AI can process information millions of times faster than humans because their electrons can travel with the speed of light but humans are bound by nerve cells that are a lot slower. So AI would take only a few years to reach the pinnacle of our society which took us many centuries to reach.

So the question is this, can we afford the risk to give our throne to another entity?

CAN WE CONTROL IT????

Humans have exploited every natural resource out there like it was their birthright and they continue to do so. Have you ever given it a thought from where this sense of a superior being originally evolved from? When humans looked back at their accomplishments and witnessed the mighty pyramids, wondrous fire, miraculous medicines and fiery weapons, they got ignorant. And they have every reason to be ignorant because no other species in the world can challenge their might. The same is the case with AI. AI will quickly surpass humans in every way possible and how are we supposed to control something that exceeds our own intellectual capacity.

According to research done on leading AI experts, by 2050, AI will be on par with human potential. It will be able to think, solve problems, invent, or even reproduce itself by just copying the data in another system.

According to scientists, this can be the turning point of humanity. Humans took millions of years to evolve and reached the stage where we are today but this journey will be done by AIs in just a few decades. Once they acquit themselves with human potential, there will be no stopping them. They will reach such heights that the human mind can't even start to fathom in just a matter of days. It took AI just four hours to be the absolute champion of chess, when it will be able to multitask like humans, there is no coming back.

Imagine if AI made civilizations of their own or rebelled against us. It is a natural law that you can't be controlled by someone who is beneath you in every way possible. What if it's the other way around and our leash ends up in its hand.

THE LOSS OF JOBS!

This is a dilemma that everyone whether he is AI friendly or not will accept. Almost 95% of jobs will cease to exist in the next 70 years according to a study. We have already started to witness its effects. Because of Self-driving cars, the driver profession is going to take a severe hit. There was a strike outside amazon by the amazon employees when they successfully tested the drone delivery system. There is already an AI created by Elon's open AI where you just have to put the requirements of your software and in minutes it will program and provide it. They haven't opened it for the public yet but imagine when they roll it out, the whole freelancing world will crumble to pieces.

Almost 400 million jobs will face automation by 2030. In the near future, even doctors will fall prey to AI. There have been some very successful automated surgeries. Even the chefs will eventually go out of business.

It is true that it will open some new income streams but how do you plan to educate and equip such a large number of masses with the required skills. This transition will require centuries and many generations will live their lives as slaves of a few trillionaires that will be at the top of the pinnacle.

Keep in mind, this is the best case Scenario if robots decide not to turn on humans.

SOLUTION

You must be thinking that if AI actually is so much dangerous then why no one is talking about it. How could the brightest brains of our community be so dumb that they are pushing humanity to the edge of extinction? I will quote a reply from Elon Musk when he was asked a similar question.

“The biggest issue I see with so-called AI experts is that they think they know more than they do, and they think they are smarter than they actually are…This tends to plague smart people. They define themselves by their intelligence and they don’t like the idea that a machine could be way smarter than them, so they discount the idea — which is fundamentally flawed.”

We tend to think that the basis of science is to make life easier for humans but it is rarely the case. The basis of science has always been the satisfaction of our curiosity. We have a terrific appetite when it comes to knowledge, no matter how much we gain it isn't enough. We can disguise it as selfless services to humanity but this isn't the truth. AI is inevitable, there will always be curious and rebellious minds that will explore this field even if they have to risk their well-being.

So we need to have a backup plan. We can't just kill the AI with bullets. It will require only a fraction of a second to copy its data in another system. There was an idea that AI must be contained in virtual reality from where it can't escape. But it isn't applicable either. Finding a bug will be child's play for AI.

The only solution is to find a solution first. A backup plan. Humans don't have any strategy that they can adapt when things go South. We first need to make some regulations and then move on with AI. This is our only salvation.

We are going way beyond our expertise. We have started to play God. And history is witness, it never ends well.