Living with Artificial Intelligence

By Kanchan Verma^* and SS Verma^**

^* Department of Computer Science and Engineering, PIT, Kapurthala (PTU Campus), Jalandhar (Punjab)

^**Department of Physics, S.L.I.E.T., Longowal, Punjab

It is machine era and we are all surrounded by machines for our use. Man is busy in making use of his intellect to design machines for his comfort. Machines are making works faster, cost effective, easy and as per requirements with many other advantages. Scientists and engineers are putting all their efforts in making these machines smarter with the use of artificial intelligence in making these machines more intelligent and to design machines which can think and even have emotions with the help of artificial intelligence. This article presents a brief introduction about the benefits and disadvantages of growing use of artificial intelligence in machines.

Benefits of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of machines. Everyone has appreciated the benefits AI has brought to mankind with the up gradation of communications devices. Consumers are already coming into increasing contact with smart machines, including flying drones and prototypes of self-driving cars. Autonomous cars, automated trading and smart cities are among the great promises of machine intelligence and artificial intelligence (AI) promises much more, including being man’s best friend. Artificial intelligence in machines has brought many applications to human life making it more competitive, secure, enjoyable and comfortable. Ever since Charles Babbage conceived his analytical engine back in 1837 the idea of computers that appear as smart as humans has been an inspirational and smart systems like, autonomous vehicles and a growing army of robots are quietly making more and more decisions every day, decisions that increasingly affect our lives. Smart machines are close to outsmarting the humans – whether driving a car or determining a medical diagnosis – leaving the human overseer with the responsibility but reduced capability.

Over the last several decades, AI — computing methods for automated perception, learning, understanding, and reasoning — have become commonplace in our lives. We plan trips using GPS systems that rely on AI to cut through the complexity of millions of routes to find the best one to take. Our smartphones understand our speech, and Siri, Cortana, and Google now are getting better at understanding our intentions. AI algorithms detect faces as we take pictures with our phones and recognize the faces of individual people when we post those pictures to Facebook. Internet search engines, such as Google and Bing, rely on a fabric of AI subsystems. On any day, AI provides hundreds of millions of people with search results, traffic predictions, and recommendations about books and movies. AI translates among languages in real time and speeds up the operation of our laptops by guessing what we’ll do next. Several companies, such as Google, BMW, and Tesla, are working on cars that can drive themselves — either with partial human oversight or entirely autonomously. Beyond the influences in our daily lives, AI techniques are playing a major role in science and medicine. AI is at work in hospitals helping physicians understand which patients are at highest risk for complications, and AI algorithms are helping to find important needles in massive data haystacks. For example, AI methods have been employed recently to discover subtle interactions between medications that put patients at risk for serious side effects. These machines can be of use in overcoming the limitations that humans have. A few from a number of artificial intelligence advantages are briefly summarized as:

• Greater precision and accuracy is achieved
• Robots can do certain laborious tasks. Painstaking activities, which have long been carried out by humans can be taken over by the robots.
• Intelligent robots can be used to explore space, they are machines and hence have the ability to endure the hostile environment of the interplanetary space. They can be made to adapt in such a way that planetary atmospheres do not affect their physical state and functioning.
• Intelligent robots can be programmed to reach the Earth’s nadirs. They can be used to dig for fuels. They can be used for mining purposes.
• The intelligence of machines can be harnessed for exploring the depths of oceans.
• Intelligent machines can replace human beings in many areas of work.
• Owing to the intelligence programmed in them, the machines can shoulder greater responsibilities and can be programmed to manage themselves.
• Smartphones with artificial intelligence provide utilities like predicting what a user is going to type and correcting human errors in spelling
• Fraud detection in smart card-based systems is possible with the use of AI.
• It is also employed by financial institutions and banks to organize and manage records.
• Organizations use digital assistants who interact with the users, thus saving the need of human resources.
• Emotions that often intercept rational thinking of a human being are not a hindrance for artificial thinkers. Lacking the emotional side, robots can think logically and take the right decisions. Sentiments are associated with moods that affect human efficiency. This is not the case with machines with artificial intelligence.
• Artificial intelligence can be utilized in carrying out repetitive and time-consuming tasks efficiently.
• Intelligent machines can be employed to do certain dangerous tasks. They can adjust their parameters such as their speed and time, and be made to act quickly, unaffected by factors that affect humans.
• Gaming is among the most common examples of the advantages of artificial intelligence.
• Algorithms can help the doctors assess patients and their health risks. It can help them know the side effects that various medicines can have.
• Surgery simulators use machine intelligence in training medical professionals.
• AI can be used to simulate brain functioning, and thus prove useful in the diagnosis and treatment of neurological problems.
• Robotic pets can help patients with depression and also keep them active.
• Robotic radiosurgery helps achieve precision in the radiation given to tumors, thus reducing the damage to surrounding tissues.
• The greatest advantage of artificial intelligence is that machines do not require sleep or breaks, and are able to function without stopping. They can continuously perform the same task without getting bored or tired. When employed to carry out dangerous tasks, the risk to human health and safety is reduced.

Dangers of Artificial Intelligence

While the benefits of speed, perfect recall, objectivity, repeatability characterize the machines this steady advance also raises some challenging questions related to AI driven technology. There is potentially a more destructive element to technology as at present, we face a number of threats to our survival, from nuclear war, catastrophic global warming, and genetically engineered viruses; the number is likely to increase in the future, with the development of new technologies, and new ways things can go wrong. Therefore, with the advancing level of artificial intelligence, people like

astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and many more have warned that artificial intelligence could outsmart us all and is calling for humans to establish colonies on other planets to avoid ultimately a near-certainty of technological catastrophe. Computers will soon become more intelligent than us. Some of the best brains in Silicon Valley are now trying to work out what happens next. These dire predictions about artificial intelligence are also joined recently by several Silicon Valley tycoons even as many have piled more money into it. Prof Hawking, who has motor neurone disease and himself uses an artificial intelligence driven system to speak said that artificial intelligence could become a real danger in the not-too-distant future if it became capable of designing improvements to itself. He told that advances in genetic engineering will allow us to increase the complexity of our DNA and improve the human race but added it would be a slow process and would take about 18 years before human beings saw any of the benefits. By contrast, according to Moore’s Law, computers double their speed and memory capacity every 18 months. The risk is that computers will develop intelligence and take over humans who are limited by slow biological evolution and couldn’t compete, and would be superseded. Others have also warned of the dangers of complacency over the consequences of unconstrained advances in artificial intelligence.

It’s natural that new technologies may trigger exciting new capabilities and applications — and also generates new anxieties. Professor Stuart Russell, a computer scientist at the University of California in Berkeley and the Centre for the study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University who has lead research on artificial intelligence, also fears that humanity might be driving off a cliff with the rapid development of AI. According to Russell a leading pioneer of the technology, artificial intelligence has the potential to be as dangerous to mankind as nuclear weapons. He fears the technology could too easily be exploited for use by the military in weapons, putting them under the control of AI systems. He warned artificial intelligence as number one risk for this century and believes it could play a part in human extinction. Among all forms of technology that could wipe out the human species, he singled out artificial intelligence, or AI, as the number one risk for this century. Researchers have warned governments not to plan for the risk of “robo-wars” in which autonomous weapons can identify and decide to kill targets without human intervention. The growth of the effectiveness and ubiquity of AI methods has also stimulated thinking about the potential risks associated with advances of AI. Some comments raise the possibility of dystopian futures where AI systems become super-intelligent and threaten the survival of humanity. Google has set up an ethics board to oversee its work in artificial intelligence and while making a push into quantum computing has established an ethics committee to monitor the work of DeepMind, the artificial intelligence start-up. The search giant has recently bought several robotics companies, along with Deep Mind, a British firm creating software that tries to help computers think like humans. Expected disadvantages of artificial intelligence can be summarized as:

• An important concern regarding the application of artificial intelligence is about ethics and moral values. Intelligence is a gift of nature and do our moral values allow us to recreate intelligence. It may not be right to install it into a machine to make it work for our benefit.
• Machines may be able to store enormous amounts of data, but the storage, access, and retrieval is not as effective as in case of the human brain. They may be able to perform repetitive tasks for long, but they do not get better with experience, like humans do. They are not able to act any different from what they are programmed to do. Though this is mostly seen as an advantage, it may work the other way, when a situation demands one to act in way different from the usual. Machines may not be as efficient as humans in altering their responses depending on the changing situations.
• One of the main disadvantages of artificial intelligence is the cost incurred in the maintenance and repair. Programs need to be updated to suit the changing requirements, and machines need to be made smarter. In case of a breakdown, the cost of repair may be very high. Procedures to restore lost code or data may be time-consuming and costly.
• Ideas like working wholeheartedly, with a sense of belonging, and with dedication have no existence in the world of artificial intelligence. Imagine robots working in hospitals without showing the care and concern that humans would do.
• Concepts such as care, understanding, and togetherness cannot be understood by machines, which is why, how much ever intelligent they become, they will always lack the human touch.
• Human beings are emotional intellectuals. They think and feel. Their feelings guide their thoughts. This is not the case with machines. Thinking machines lack a creative mind. The intuitive abilities that humans possess, the way humans can judge based on previous knowledge, the inherent abilities that they have, cannot be replicated by machines. Also, machines lack common sense.
• Thinking machines will govern all the fields and populate the positions that humans occupy, leaving thousands of people jobless. People will be left with nothing to do and empty time may result in its destructive use.
• With the heavy application of artificial intelligence, humans may become overly dependent on machines, losing their mental capacities. Due to the reduced need to use their intelligence, lateral thinking and multitasking abilities of humans may diminish.
• If the control of machines goes in the wrong hands, it may cause destruction. Machines won’t think before acting. Thus, they may be programmed to do the wrong things, or for mass destruction.
• Ideally, human beings should continue to be the masters of machines, however, if things turn the other way round, the world will turn into chaos. Intelligent machines may prove to be smarter than us, they might enslave us and start ruling the world.

Conclusion

The risks of self-improving intelligent machines may seem to be grossly exaggerated but not serve as a distraction from the existential risks we already face, especially given that the limited AI technology we already have is poised to make threats like those posed by nuclear weapons even more pressing than they currently are. Disturbingly, little or no technical progress beyond that demonstrated by self-driving cars is necessary for artificial intelligence to have potentially devastating, cascading economic, strategic, and political effects. Industry and academia are requested to join hand-in-hand in identifying and studying the risks of AI applications and growth and in finding solutions to addressing them. AI algorithms should not be put in control of potentially-dangerous systems until providing a high degree of assurance that they will behave safely and properly. More than 12,000 technology experts, scientists and researchers have signed or endorsed an open letter warning of the dangers of autonomous weapons and have called for a ban on artificial intelligence (AI) to manage weapons beyond meaningful human control. The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious. Finally, it should be understood that artificial intelligence has several pros but it has its disadvantages as well. Its benefits and risks should be carefully weighed before employing it for human convenience. Or, in the greed to play God, man may destroy himself.

Acknowledgement: The use of information retrieved through various references/sources of internet in this article is highly acknowledged.