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The world-famous physicist, Stephen Hawking, has claimed that ‘AI may replace humans altogether’ as a ‘new form of life’ that can rapidly learn and advance. This implies that people, meaning you and me, will be obsolete!
Oxford professor Nick Bostrom predicts that humans will successfully create super-intelligent machines. While this might be considered a milestone in history, Bostrom has voiced concerns about what might happen if an ‘intelligence explosion’ takes place. He believes that the first machine to attain superintelligence could be powerful enough to shape the future according to its preferences. Scary, right? But this might be years into the future! Even so, the current implications for an artificially intelligent society are becoming apparent. In 2015, the Bank of England suggested that one third of jobs in the UK–15 million jobs!–could be lost to automation. For example, intelligent assistants like Alexa could replace administrative staff. Also, it’s not just low-skill jobs that are now under risk. Soon, smarter machines could affect a much broader range of jobs. Additionally, AI Ethics are under question, as AI and its algorithms are not neutral. They reflect the intentions and involuntary biases of the teams of programmers and data scientists and the bodies involved in implementing this technology.
In conclusion, I think critics have the right to be wary of the proliferation of AI in our lives, and the ethical and practical problems that it presents to humanity.
*TURN*
On June 30th 2021, researchers from the University of Gothenburg have found an artificial intelligence model to predict what kind of virus might spread from animals to humans. Now, you do not need me to talk about how useful this is in the current scenario! The increasing ability of machines in recent years to replicate or even supersede human abilities in complex tasks has been impressive.
Already, AI techniques have allowed machines to beat the best players in the world at both chess and Go. Far more real-world applications exist for AI systems. For example, voice-recognition systems like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri use AI techniques to learn what the most suitable answers to our questions might be. Combined with huge datasets, AI-enabled machines could learn to interpret x-rays and other scans, making diagnosis quicker and more accurate. Now, to ease your worry about employment, companies aren’t completely eradicating things that have been working for them. As is often said, AI isn’t a job killer, it’s a job category killer. What AI makes possible is a more abstract form of automation. The initial fear about introducing automated systems in the early 20th century has passed and they are now our routine. Therefore, I believe we should put our human fears to rest.
