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Running head: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Is Artificial Intelligence Beneficial to Society?

Ivan Mota-Aguilar

University of Texas at El Paso

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Abstract

Artificial intelligence is a growing field in todays society and is used in almost every

facet of society. This literature review plans to explain what Artificial intelligence is as well as

provide a background of why it is becoming such an important advancement in science and

technology. The main goal of this paper is to provide the reader the answer to four questions that

will help to answer the question of whether or not AI is beneficial to society. AI, is being used in

some of the most important fields of study such as medicine and engineering. In addition, it is

being used as an important tool to generate simulations and results in these fields. However, AI it

is not perfect and sometimes it can have its downsizes and instead of helping it ends up hurting

data or misfunctioning. This paper also explores the negative size of AI as well as how it can

hurt society instead of helping it.

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Is Artificial Intelligence Beneficial to Society?

Artificial intelligence has become a major area of study in the modern world. AI, is being

used in a lot of the academic fields such as biology, chemistry, finances, engineering, and more.

Also, AI is used for a lot of things, from managing the products in a manufacturing company to

simulate results in a research in a laboratory. However, AI has also become a major theme in

science fiction. The idea that a computer or a machine could have the same cognitive abilities,

thoughts, as well as the ability to create things as a human person has being a big inspiration for

science fiction writers and audiences. For example, The HAL 9000 computer from the film

Space Odyssey where the malfunction of artificial intelligence is presented. For things like that,

nowadays there is a big conflict in the area of study of artificial intelligence. If whether Artificial

intelligence is harmful or beneficial to society. In the article benefits and risks of artificial

intelligence by the MIT professor Max Tegmark, is explained some of the concerns that most of

the people have about artificial intelligence, such as the possibility of a superintelligence AI

capable of turning conscious and control the humans, as well as being able to replace the humans

in every work field. To completely analyze the question of whether AI is helpful to society or

not, both stances on this issue will be analyzed using the following questions to fully explain the

entire definition of Artificial intelligence and the reasons why it is good or bad for society as

well as the effects in it.

1. What is artificial intelligence?

2. What are some of the applications of artificial intelligence?

3. Is artificial intelligence harmful to society?

4. Are there social consequences of artificial intelligence?

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What is artificial intelligence?

In the academic journal The Real Risks of Artificial Intelligence, Dr. David Parnas

presents the idea of how hard it is to define what the word artificial intelligence really means. Dr.

Parnas explains that most of the computational scientist who uses the term artificial intelligence

do not know how to define it even thought they understand how it works. Dr. Amit Tyagi in his

paper Artificial Intelligence: Boon or Bane, explains

In computer science, an ideal intelligent machine is a flexible rational agent that

perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at some

goal. Thus, when a machine mimics a humanlike behavior, e.g., learning, planning,

reasoning, problem-solving, the perception of the environment, natural language

processing, etc., then it falls under the category of AI (Tyagi, 2017).

In other words, artificial intelligence is the ability of a computational system to emulate human

functions following a sequence of ambiguous steps best known as an algorithm. Also,

Even though, Artificial intelligence sounds like an error-free system, in reality AI has

some problems. Dr. Parnas examine this topic in his paper when he explains AI does not always

get the right answer programs are not based on rules of thumb, that is, rules based on

experience but not supported by theory (Parnas, 2017). An example of this could be a person

judging a situation based on previews similar situations in his life that come to his mind. This is

one of the reasons why AI is not being used in important fields. Dr. Parnas explains this in his

research and mentions how there are three distinguished types of researches in the area of

artificial intelligence. One being making algorithms to make AI imitate human actions and

behavior to fully understand how humans tackle programs as well as how they think. Other being
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algorithms to make AI play games such as, chess, checkers and sudoku to develop the best way

to play them. And the last type of research being, how to develop computerized products to make

humans life easier.

Furthermore, another important aspect of Artificial Intelligence is the exponential growth

it has had in recent years. In Intels article Three Ways Artificial Intelligence is Good for

Society it is explained that there are two main reasons why Artificial intelligence has evolved

and advance so much. One of the reasons is cloud computing, which is the delivery of

computing servicesservers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and more

over the Internet (Richardson, 2017). This system helps AI improve because it makes computer

performance better and data storage more easily accessible from everywhere. The second reason

is the Moores Law. This law was developed by Intels co-founder Gordon Moore that noticed

that the number of transistors in computational circuits were doubling every 18 months. As a

result of this, he predicted that this trend will continue, and as 2017 it has been proven right. The

way the Moores Law helps AI to keep growing is by increasing the computer performance at

lower cost every 18 months. In the following picture (Figure 1), it can be visualized the Moores

law and how it started in 1971 with the Intel 4004 processing unit and has been increasing every

18 months. Also, this figure uses as label the transistor count of each computer processor which

can be translated as the amount of bites of information it can manage every nanosecond

(Richardson, 2017).
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Figure 1. Graphical representation of Moores law from 1971 to 2011

What are some of the applications of artificial intelligence?

As stated before, Artificial Intelligence is being used in some of the most important areas

of study as well as other fields. Artificial Intelligence has endless applications in a lot of places

in society; from voice-activated virtual assistants that help everyone to make their daily life

easier, smartphones and smart thermostats, to AI used to solve some of the critical social

problems and challenges. In Intels article about Artificial Intelligence by Julian Richardson, it is

examined three social challenges being solved using the aid of artificial intelligence as a huge

part of the solution.

One on the challenges being solved with AI is food production. In todays world

overpopulation has become a really important issue The Food and Agriculture Organization of
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the United Nations (FAO) estimates that the earths population will balloon to 9.7 billion people

on by 2050 (Richardson, 2017). As a result of this, the farming standards will need to be

changed and most of the farmers will have to increase the amounts of crops that they plant.

Julian Richardson explains in the Intels article that here is where the AI technology FarmLogs

by Intel enters. FarmLogs is a farming management app with the purpose of helping American

farmers track the weather in the area, monitor their crop fields and use satellite imagery to

monitor irregular plant growth. Real-time data analytics helps farmers maximize their crop

yields and profits. Using FarmLogs field data analyzer (Richardson, 2017). All of this being

powered by a data base of an Artificial Intelligence responsible for calculating all of the needed

data to be send to the farmers.

Another problem being solved by the implementation of Artificial Intelligence is cancer

diagnosis. As everyone knows cancer is a frightening diagnosis, that impacted around 1.65

million people in the U.S. in 2015 (Richardson, 2017). Also, waiting for biopsy results can be

stressful, but AI may help accelerate the diagnosis and treatment process. The solution for this

problem is to use AI to accelerate the time it takes to diagnose and treat a cancer patient. This

application tries to create a precision medicine for cancer patients, this would means getting a

diagnosis and a personalized treatment plan in less than 24 hours. This project plans to create a

new type of cancer treatment precision medicine, this type of cancer treatment is based on the

genomic sequencing of the individuals cancer, health history, lifestyle and more (Richardson,

2017). This is when Artificial Intelligence comes into place. With the help of a high-performance

computing system, computer scientist working very close with oncologists will be able to

develop an artificial intelligence capable of comparing the molecules of a patient with a database

of previews cases of the same cancer. Once the artificial intelligence finds a match, the physician
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can use all of this data to customize each patients treatment plan and all in one day (Richardson,

2017). This will help cancer patients to being treated in an early stage of the cancer, which can

help to save a lot of lives.

The last problem presented in the Intels web article is children safety. Nowadays it is

really easy to have access to digital technologies and the internet, because of this it is easier for

child predators to obtain and share child sexual abuse images. according to the National Center

for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). In 2016 alone, its CyberTipline received 8.2

million reports related to abusive images, online enticement, trafficking and molestation

(Richardson, 2017). This showing how this is really a huge issue. The way Artificial intelligence

is helping solve this problem is by optimizing and making automatic the process of scanning

sites that may have suspicious content. This by using the NCMEC access to many websites. This

can help a lot to trace child molesters that go into these sites and imprison them.

Is artificial intelligence harmful to society?

It is very well known that not a single technological advancement is perfect and Artificial

intelligence is not the exception. Also, Andrew Chakhoyan explains how some of the most

brilliant minds of this time feel about AI. Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and countless others

scientist are broadly on the same page with Musk and Harris about how deadly AI can be, some

of the leading thinkers recognize that AI, like any other technology at the beginning, is value-

neutral. However, gunpowder was first used in fireworks (Chaykhana, 2017). This explaining

that this scientist believe AI could be eventually used as a weapon in the future.

Also, Dr. Amit Tyagi in his research explores the idea of AI generating unemployment,

Dr. Tyagi explains how Chinese entrepreneurs are trying to automate more the manufacturing
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process because they want to stop relying in the low-paid migrant labor. China is the largest

importer of robots. The IFRs calculations show that China has 326 robots per 10,000 workers,

while the US and South Korea have 164 and 478 robots (Tyagi, 2017). This demonstrates how

the implementation of Artificial Intelligence can affect negatively the economy of a county by

taking over manufacturing jobs. In his web article Daniel Faggella also claims that AI could have

a negative impact in the economy the most pressing short- and long-term risks of AI is the

financial and economic harm that may be wrought, as well as mismanagement of AI by human

beings (Faggella, 2016).

In an interview at the University of Texas at El Paso, Computer science professor Dr.

Mahmud Hossain explained that artificial intelligence has grown exponentially in recent years;

and now with the inclusion of quantum computing that increases a lot the processors

performance of a computer, artificial intelligence has endless possibilities. Based on this

statement, Dr. Hossain states that artificial intelligence can be used for everything, even as a

weapon. Also, he mentioned how there are a lot of researches trying to use quantum computing

to simulate the connections of a human brain to simulate and understand humans thinking and

decision-making works inside of the brain. Even though, this can be used to understand how

some of the psychological problems in the humans brain develop, this can also be used for bad

purposes as explained by Dr. Hossain.

Are there social consequences of artificial intelligence?

In todays society, most of the time the consequences of a new technology are not a big

factor when it comes to making the decision of whether it should be developed or not. this

reason, artificial intelligence has some positive and negative consequences when developing it.

In a web article by journalist Bianca Nogrady explores the idea of society putting too much trust
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in some of these smart systems powered by an artificial intelligence being develop. However,

Nogrady explains that these systems are only as good as the data it learns from and that

computers do not show the reasoning and work behind the solutions and answers it presents. One

example that Nogrady gives is a system trained to learn and identify from a group of patients that

have pneumonia which of them has a higher risk of death from the illness. This so that the

patient selected might be treated with a higher priority than the other patients. The artificial

intelligence automatically classifies patients with asthma with a lower risk of death because of

past records where people with pneumonia and a past history of asthma get the intensive care

needed and get the treatment needed to reduce their risk of dying. The learning of the artificial

intelligence understands this as asthma and pneumonia equals a lower risk of dying. All of this

can result of a lot of patients with pneumonia not getting the appropriate treatment because of an

AI misfunction.

Another consequence of AI explored by Nogrady is the chances of criminals reoffending.

In this cases Artificial Intelligence will use information from previews inmates that were

released and with this information it will consider the ones that committed another crime after

being released as well as the amount of time they spend on jail. After this is will calculate the

probability of the inmates committing the crime again, and if the changes are acceptable a report

of this will be send to the people in charge of making the decision. This can result in a lot of

issues. For example, this AI system is not personalized and is dealing with all of the inmates the

same way.

Conclusion

Artificial Intelligence is one of the most powerful technologies that humanity has ever

created, and year after year is growing exponentially. Even though, Artificial intelligence is
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nothing more than lines of code programmed to do a task, now with the extraordinary advances

in computer hardware it can be programmed to do almost every task a human can do. However,

there is a lot of things that need to be considered before researching and improving artificial

intelligence; as explained in this literature review, there are a lot of negative and positive effects

to AI, it can help us understand how our mind works, facilitate a lot of repetitive tasks and even

improve our life with systems capable of detecting and treating illnesses. On the other hand,

there is a possibility of AI taking over industrial and manufacturing jobs as well as affecting

negatively the economy.

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References

Chakhoyan, A. (n.d.). Artificial Intelligence: The Good, The Bad, and The Unfathomable.

Retrieved October 22, 2017, from https://shift.newco.co/artificial-intelligence-the-good-

the-bad-and-the-unfathomable-84e6083b3b2

Faggella, D. (2016, May 21). Exploring the risks of artificial intelligence. Retrieved October 22,

2017, from https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/21/exploring-the-risks-of-artificial-

intelligence/

Nogrady, B. (2016, November 10). Future - The real risks of artificial intelligence. Retrieved

October 22, 2017, from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161110-the-real-risks-of-

artificial-intelligence

Parnas, D. L. (2017). The Real Risks of Artificial Intelligence: Incidents from the early days of

AI research are instructive in the current AI environment. Communications Of The ACM,

60(10), 27-31.

Richardson, J. (2017, May 11). Three Ways Artificial Intelligence is Good for Society. Retrieved

May 22, 2017, from https://iq.intel.com/artificial-intelligence-is-good-for-society/

Tegmark, M. (n.d.). Benefits & Risks of Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved October 22, 2017,

from https://futureoflife.org/background/benefits-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/

Tyagi, A. a. (2017). Artificial Intelligence: Boon or Bane?. IUP Journal Of Computer Sciences,

11(2), 43-56.