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