Artificial Intelligence a Blessing or a Curse

humans were always far better at

inventing tools rather than using them

wisely

in recent centuries they strive to

improve their lives by developing new

technologies

we as humans designed so many amazing

tools as

cars computers nuclear energy

but with such conveniences always comes

at great risk

and dangers like environmental

distractions global warming or

social injustice but now we are at the

age of new technological revolution

caused by artificial intelligence so

artificial intelligence doesn’t it sound

promising

isn’t it a spectacularly big promise of

tomorrow that appeals to us

unluckily it entails a lot of risks and

dangers

but before i elaborate on that more let

me briefly sum up all the most important

advantages of ai

first of all we have self-driving cars

there are about 1.2 million casualties

in car accidents per year

and 90 of them are caused by human

errors such as

drunk driving overspeed or texting

let’s ask ourselves then would ai commit

all of those errors

of course not ai cars would be connected

to one algorithm that would control

all the traffic and as a result they

wouldn’t collide and cost so many deaths

what about healthcare ai with the help

of biotechnology will allow a much

better and cheaper health care for

possibly 8 billion people

today if you felt sick you would just go

to a doctor

fortunately thanks to ai and biometric

sensors in your body you will not need

to do that anymore

your ai doctor will monitor your health

continuously and react to any viruses or

bacterial infections days ahead

when you start feeling ill and finally

the greatest advantage of ai personal

advisor

how well do you know yourself how often

do you make good decisions

and how often not the best ones that you

regret very soon

after 100 clicks facebook knows us

better than our best friend

and based on that ai will learn our

personalities preferences and help us

make better decisions

what about netflix if you’re looking for

a new film netflix comes with proposals

in the future it will make you much

better recommendations due to cameras

and facial recognition

it will not only know what films you

watched but also how you reacted to any

particular scene

in the future ai will make your

recommendations in very personal topics

like

what to study whom to marry or where to

work

it will know the true you and the true

other people

but now it gets tricky here because what

if

we become entirely dependent on ai

if 100 clicks are enough for facebook on

our personalities better than their best

friend

then this is knowledge worth billions in

the end

a few global tech companies like google

google amazon or apple

will have a massive quantity of

information data about people

in the end any of our activities in the

lab leave the trace

and these are traces that allow those

firms to learn our personalities

emotional types and preferences

but this is only where the big issue

begins because

this information has a huge economic

value to companies who’d like to sell us

their products

they may address customized

advertisements to convince and appeal to

our emotions

and in short to manipulate our decisions

however one of the most serious and

dangerous to liberal democracy

would be exploiting this data in order

to fulfill political agendas

you might have heard about the case of

cambridge analytica

in 2016 cambridge analytica governed

data from

around 67 million accounts on facebook

and used it to prepare trump’s

presidential campaign

there was a similar case with brexit

leave campaign

both of them used the personal data in

order to influence people

in their decision making by addressing

political messages to them

matching their personality types

so how will the elections in the future

look like

will parties have access to all this

data and personalized advertisements win

the elections

wouldn’t it mean the end of democracy

there will be soon ai technology

available

improving our brains and bodies allowing

them to function faster

concentrate better and work more

efficiently however this technology will

be very expensive

and hence available only to some small

wealthy elites

who may in the end possess far better

cognitive abilities than the rest of

humanity

how will these superhumans treat the

less intelligent ones then

well many of them will lose their job

due to automation having nothing to do

living on a basic income of let’s say 1

000 euro guaranteed by state

so is it not possible then that these

super humans may treat those less

intelligent ones

as white colonizers did black africans

100 200 years ago

will we end up in an era of new racism

well up to recently people thought

machines would only replace the physical

jobs

if we know that human abilities split

into physical and cognitive

and that physical have been covered by

machines in huge extent by now

we’re only left with the cognitive ones

but ai

is now beginning to outperform people in

more and more of those skills

and shockingly it turns out that our

choices of practically every aspect in

our lives

happen not to be the result or outcome

of some free will but rather billions of

neurons calculating probabilities within

a split

second if machines operate based on the

analysis of data

and human brain functions similarly but

committing much more errors during the

process

does it lead us to machines being better

versions of humans

will we end up completely jobless and

use this

and finally the last danger i would like

to mention today comes along with the

aspect of enhancing ai’s abilities for

machine learning

and that means the ability to learn from

itself and its mistakes

and even devise new unconventional

solutions

or even becoming an entirely independent

intelligence

but the big question is will ai not only

advise us

help in decision making but also with

some time

start to make those decisions for us

and finally take control over our lives

where does it lead to such machines

could actually establish its own

authority systems

and it may sound outrageous and very

unlikely for now

but technology is developing

unimaginably fast and if we do not

control it

this scenario could become the outcome