Is Artificial Intelligence Really a Threat?
I would start with a famous quote of the great scientist Mr. Stephen Hawking. He once told that "AI is likely to be either the best or worst thing to happen to humanity". So, now it's time to figure out whether it's impact had been the best or the worst in the last decade.
I had several discussions on this topic with various people, who were from different demographic, age group and had different thought process. I still remember one of my conversation with an old man, Mr. Rao, travelling with me on flight from Bengaluru to New Delhi on a chilly February morning in 2012. He was a retired government employee with a firm belief that Artificial Intelligence was already taking away and would take away more jobs, thereby leading to poverty. Listening to this, I started thinking if that was really the case. But, my mind didn't support the same. It took me even 10 years back when automation was taking over the society. It was a time of great turmoil, when at every part of the country, machines were replacing manual power, people were losing jobs, and so on and so forth. Although it appeared to be a huge disturbance in society, it didn't continue long. People settled down calm and quiet all over again. Neither did the people who lost their jobs committed suicide, nor was there a mass starvation. Henceforth, it was obvious that they either adopted to the change and made a position for themselves, or found some alternative ways of living. The overall impact was increase in productivity, efficiency, business growth, which in turn opened new job opportunities.
With this thought in mind, I explained Mr. Rao that employment vs technology was an age-old debate. Although it seems like AI was taking away more jobs than creating the same, then it's high time he should look back on every other big disruption that happened in the past. There's no alternative of change in the path of success. And AI was that new change. All it was doing was just taking out people from their comfort zones ad making them work on new challenges to be more productive than ever before. The situation demanded reskilling rather upskilling over job loss. I don't remember if he was actually satisfied with my thought, but, even after six long years of working with AI, I still believe the same.
Nowadays, I also come across a new question in several discussions, conferences and articles. It mostly centers around if artificial intelligence is going to replace humans. Well, I personally never think so that AI has even the capacity of becoming an existential threat to humanity. When we are smart enough to build a machine with super-human intelligence, we are equally smart to know how to destroy the same. And if not, no one would ever do the stupidity of giving infinite power to its own creation for self-destruction. Besides, emotions like urge to dominate, desires of power are very much human-centric and no way correlated with intelligence in general. We often say that machines respond, but yes, humans react. Reaction and response are not even similar, being the same is just a dream. So, just relax and grow with the growth of artificial intelligence thereby making life simpler. And if you are still worried if someone deliberately builds a dangerous and generally-intelligent AI, then be assured that others would still be able to build a second, narrower AI whose only purpose would be to destroy the first one. If both AIs have access to the same amount of computing resources, the second one would win, just like a tiger or a shark or a virus kills a human of superior intelligence.
I would conclude saying that treat AI as a tool, rather a threat. You will soon realize that every work is becoming more effective, efficient, simple and your passion to perfection is becoming a reality.