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After 13.8 billion years of slow but constant evolution, the human species have come to a level where it can extend its area of reach through the creation of Intelligent Machines. These machines with their advanced technologies can now perform multiple complex levels of tasks with accuracy & precision, which are difficult for the human hands to work upon. In 1956, during the Dartmouth conference, John McCarthy coined the term of Artificial Intelligence. But even at that time, he couldn’t even have predicted how the research in Artificial Intelligence would have turned, where now an AI system( Google’s DeepMInd ) could learn to outplay their human counterparts on many computer games like Breakout, Pong, Boxing, Video Pinball, etc.
The same AI, later on, defeated twenty top players in the world in the game of Go, one of the ultimate strategy games. The shocking part of the reality is that this AI system knew nothing about this game or any other. All it just did is to maximise its score and in this process at times, it even has amazed its developers by showing innovative score-maximizing strategy which they even couldn’t think of, leaving them jaw dropped. So in a way now the developers can learn new strategies from the AI they’d built.
This reach of AI isn’t just limited to virtual game worlds, but in many instances, it has provided us investment, political and military strategy in the real world. The reason why these technological advancements amaze us is that in the real world it doesn’t have to deal with the complicated human psychology and unordered information, that surround us. It’s potential is uncharted as it can make itself learn different cognitive and locomotive tasks that too without any kind of help from human programmers. Intelligence basically means the ability to perform complex goals. Broadly this definition includes the ability to acquire information from various available senses and acting upon a decision it has chosen from the acquired knowledge.
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Artificial Intelligence has now with its ability have changed the lives of the common man in unpredictable ways in multiple situations in his/her daily life. Andrew Ng, one of the most prolific researchers in AI & Machine learning, has said that AI is the new Electricity. Just as the Electricity transformed our environment a century ago, AI is seeping its arm to most of the industry it can and transforming them, Through assimilating and organizing data around us it can simply predict a person’s need even before the demand is made. Thus we can say in a way it has led to the fourth Industrial Revolution making a man’s life easy by powering many of our interactions today.
The Controversies
But most of the AI we see around is Artificial Narrow intelligence(ANI), where it has the ability to perform a narrow set of goals, for ex: playing games or driving a car, etc. But the current stream of researches in Artificial Intelligence is moving towards Artificial General intelligence(AGI), where it will have the ability to accomplish virtually any goal, including learning. World’s leading AI researchers don’t have any kind of consensus regarding when and how AGI can reach human level abilities, where it can perform any cognitive task that a human can perform. Some researchers believe that it won’t happen in a foreseeable future while others are positive about this phase of AI. In this disagreement, a certain section of researchers believes in a fascinating idea of Singularity.
Until now humans were improving machines but this idea of Singularity states that’s a future could be possible where AI can explode in such a way that it can reach the phase of Machines improving Machines, potentially much faster than humans could have done. But this idea is not creating the controversies now. The concern is of the jobs that it has now taken over from humans especially in the manufacturing and services sector.
In countries like China, Japan & the US, robots have outcasted human in many areas like waiters, custom officers, Housemaids, etc. In India this year, the Kerala police have inducted a new robot for police work, while Chennai walking in the path of Japan have got its second robot-themed restaurant, where robots apart from being waiters, easily interact with customers in English and Tamil language. So the pace at which it is expanding has led to fears in many of losing jobs. And all this is leading to an AI paranoia that it would take over the entire humanity.
But one shouldn’t forget that with this disruptive and self-transformative technology, humans are now reaching new heights of achievements. With the help of AI, we can now avert many traffic accidents, 90% of which are caused by preventable human errors. It can make complicated and delicate medical surgeries perform with ease, at times even without the physical presence of a doctor near the patient.
Legal & Ethical Challenges of AI
It is also acceptable that if AI is not regulated properly, it can cast unimaginable problems in many spheres of life. For example, a self-driving car in a situation can cause damage to human life, there can unrestricted violation of data for information, can morph videos of famous personalities with such precision that it would be difficult for human eyes to differ the fake from original, etc. The question looming over our head here is that in such a situation who should be held responsible – for causing damage to humans or property.
Such questions have already put courts in the U.S. and Germany baffled. Countries around the globe are already discussing these problems and some have already done a share. For eg: Germany has already come up with a set of ethical laws & rules for self-driven cars, stating that if a situation arises to choose human life will always have priority over property or animal life. Since autonomous vehicles have now become part in the daily life of many countries,
