Are We Developing Artificial Intelligence To Support Humanity
hello
and namaste my name is samdeep day
i’m a research scientist on the topic of
embedded artificial intelligence in
mobile platforms
thank you for allowing me to be with you
today
and share my experience and knowledge on
artificial intelligence
and bust some myths and misconceptions
related to the topic last year
i used to go for bachata dancing lessons
and it was one of the ways i socialized
so when i used to meet someone new
i would introduce myself and mention
that
i am an on-device embedded artificial
intelligence scientist
which basically means that i design and
implement artificial intelligence or ai
in short in embedded or mobile platforms
one evening one of the new acquaintances
during the pachata session made a
comment
so you design ai like skynet from the
movie terminator
isn’t that bad for humanity aren’t ai
taking our
jobs now and possibly lead to a
an extension level well
i was flabbergasted i wasn’t sure
how to respond to that immediately so i
paused
for a minute and shared a story
a story of a middle class family in
india
the family consisted of a couple
who were both artists and barely making
enough to live by the day the couple
was blessed with a son and both the
husband
and wife started to work
to provide the best to their son
to their family now the husband and wife
were not fortunate enough to pursue
higher education
in the university and their dream
was to get their son the best of
education
so that he doesn’t have to face the
financial troubles
that the couple went through
both the husband and wife worked day and
night
and provided the best of education that
the sun could get
in india the sun went to pursue
a bachelor’s degree in computer science
in one of the top colleges
in india the first in the family
to ever achieve so after graduating
with the first class honours degree the
son went on to pursue
a master’s degree this time in a foreign
country
till the age of 22 the son never saw his
father
rest a day and when the father is
asked by the son why are you working so
hard
the father replied i am just waiting for
you to complete studies
get a job then get married and then
i can finally retire and go out to
travel the world with your mother
without carrying my work with me
unfortunately when the son was studying
his master’s degree his parents
went through a horrific car accident
which caused severe injuries to his
mother
and paralyzed his father
the son somehow completed his
postgraduate study
and went to work in the industry to
financially provide
for his family yes
this story is about my family
till this date the sacrifices made
by my parents weigh heavy on my shoulder
after my father was paralyzed doctors in
india
gave him only a few months to live
but my father wouldn’t give up mentally
nor my mother would give her side
up by my father to fight
through this back in 2014
when the accident happened medicine and
technology in india
went that advanced and doctors
couldn’t help my father anyway
to enable him to walk again because of
his spinal cord injury
in my mind all i could think of
is that my father was not able to
achieve his dream
of retiring and traveling the world with
my mother
as he wanted to four years later
one day i woke up and couldn’t bear the
thought that
i could do something about it instead of
just waiting for someone else to invent
the technology
to help my father and thousands of other
paralyzed patients
with spinal cord injury around the world
so i gave up my job as a software
engineer
and went to pursue a phd in designing
and implementing ai in embedded systems
at the university of essex
this could help me in developing
intelligent robotic
exoskeleton to help people like my
father
to walk again to help my father
walk again today at the university of
essex a group of scientists are
developing
ai-based robotic hand
exoskeleton to rehabilitate stroke
patients
every time when someone says
that ai is taking our jobs or
it is there to destroy humanity i
always share this story and tell it to
them
that ai is in fact helping us to achieve
our better selves there are so many more
examples
where ai is a helping hand rather than
a destructive one for example
to detect skin cancer based on images
a doctor can accurately detect such a
case
with the naked eyes almost 60 percent of
the time
using a dermoscopy such cases can be
detected with
almost 80 percent accuracy whereas
an ai based agent can detect such cases
with 92.5 percent accuracy
however when you combine the efforts
of human doctor and an ai
agent together skin cancer can be
detected with
99.5 accuracy
hence making skin cancer detection
and treatment much more effective
therefore ai is enabling us to achieve
super human capabilities which are
ultimately saving lives
another case of ai helping us
through the kovid 19 pandemic where ai
based agents
help radiologists to detect covid19
cases
from ct scan images of patient’s lungs
this helped improve the time to detect
positive covid19 cases and save more
lives in the process
now most probably when you seek
technical
or customer support for your favorite
product
and services you might be talking to a
ai
chatbot without even knowing it
this helps us to get faster support
and also give you a better customer
experience
the times when the chatbot can’t
understand your accent
well it happens with me a lot of time
but
it’s still a work in progress
that being said ai is still in its
infancy stage
when it comes to applications
many people are afraid of the fact that
what if
ai is able to create
as we do will ai create machines to
destroy
us to be honest to destroy ai
to develop ai which is able to achieve
such level
of learning and reasoning
it would actually require cross-domain
learning and reasoning
like we do
for example when we meet another person
we try to understand the other person’s
personality
character not just by looking at them
but by interacting with them through
smell
and observing their body language as
well
so we are using multiple types of
learning and reasoning systems
to understand this person when we meet
them
and we are still at least 20 to 40 years
away from developing an ai which is
capable
of such high level of learning and
reasoning
on its own people might be
worried about terminators but the
reality is
at the moment we are developing ai based
social robots
which are helping humans to reduce
depression
and improve happiness without even
realizing
how ai agents are helping us they’re
improving our lives
every second ai agents
are now also able to help you prolong
the battery life of your smartphone
even more by learning your mobile usage
habits
so that you can enjoy your netflix or
favorite
creams for longer period of time
ai agents are also helping you
to reduce food waste by learning
your food buying and wasting habits
such that it can help you to make
much more informed decision on what food
products
to buy the next time
these are only some of the examples
by which ai has played a positive role
in our society so far
but with any technology it depends on
the user
how we are using it whether for good
or for bad just like when the technology
revolving nuclear reaction
was developed some used it to power
cities
whereas some used it to destroy cities
the same way ai has recently been used
to hack into systems and also been used
to generate
porn images of any given person
but it is not ai’s fault it is
upon us and how we are using this
powerful technology
in our society
for every poor use of ai we have much
more cases
where ai is helping patients like my
father
to get back on their feet so
give it a chance be more acceptable
of this powerful technology because
if we don’t then we might be doing
injustice
to the people whose lives could be
improved
using ai now that
being said i will leave you with
one last question to ask yourself
are we developing ai to support humanity
in the future thank you for listening