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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE; BOON OR BANE?

Living in a world and in an era that is witnessing tremendous advancements and progressive innovations in every domain you could think of, the phenomenal and conspicuous role of artificial intelligence is making our lives a bed of roses that can't be belittled. The technology behind this sensational invention of mankind has been evolving ever since it has emerged, that today it opens a vast realm of unfathomable possibilities capable of revolutionising the journey of humankind. Indeed, the advent of artificial intelligence could be perceived as a new-fangled revolution traversing and transcending the impediments of our imagination, remoulding industrial units and societal structures worldwide, impacting diverse professions, influencing the way we interact with technological modifications and the way we associate with one another and enhancing the everyday life of earthlings. The word 'earthling' is more apt to describe ourselves in this age where humanoid robots are getting developed to an extent resembling the physique and demeanour of human beings. From self-driving cars to virtual assistants, the world of artificial intelligence showers far-reaching prospects for a technicalized future awaiting us.

But what exactly is artificial intelligence? Is the concept limited to varied robotic structures we could think of whenever we hear this term?

Artificial intelligence is a broader science that deals with the concept of developing intelligent machines, which acquire the capabilities of performing the cognitive functions of human brain just as a human does. It's all about evolving machines equipped with man-made intelligence that can simulate the working of human brain so that these programmed super intelligent structures think like human, behave like human and have the ability to take decisions on their own.

However, it's not a novel concept as its history could be traced back to the collective efforts of multiple researchers and pioneers over several decades. It all began in 1950 when Alan Turing proposed the 'Turing Test' to determine a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour like humans. And it was in 1956 during the Dartmouth Workshop that John McCarthy, known to be the father of AI, coined the term with his fellow researchers while exploring this idea of generating machines that could mimic human intellect. From then on, this field has been noticing numerous fruitful advancements and transformations in the form of innumerable modern AI techniques such as neural networks, machine learning, deep learning, and applications in industries including natural language processing, robotics, facial and speech recognition and many more.

The major breakthrough of AI that intensified its popularity among the crowd recently was the launching of Chat GPT by Open AI in November 2022 for public use. Providing a personalised virtual conversationalist that could generate prompt replies for your queries of any kind was the goal, and the minds of people from children to adults have been mesmerized by the efficiency it put forward in making their lives better. So, with the emergence of AI applications such as machine learning, we were successful in creating machines that could employ their roles without any human intervention in every field such as healthcare, navigation, education, banking, E-commerce, online recommendations and customer support, accurate language translations and virtual assistance to name a few.

Having said that, as much as AI propels us towards an easier life, the harm it could cause to humanity as a whole is of great concern.

 Despite the fact that AI can be utilised effectively for better concept learning, fact-checking, and learning languages the way countries like Japan does, the developments in AI paves a way to impact the education system negatively. There have been several reports worldwide that students today are completing school and college assignments, projects etc. with the assistance of chat bots thereby killing their own productivity and creativity. Suppose, you need a complex algorithm, an essay, a set of patterns, an animated image, a creative logo or a computer program, chat bots are there to help you in minuscule seconds. 

Political propaganda too makes use of AI for persuading voters by sending them personalised ads based on their likes, dislikes, and judgements from the data collected as in the case of the employment of machine learning in the 'Facebook Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal' in 2016 when AI hasn't even reached today's level.

Job markets are also getting severely impacted as only the professions that require lots of dexterity, mobility and unpredictable environments are going to be safe from being replaced by AI according to the words of Martin Ford, an American futurist specialized in the rise of AI and robots. Apparently, 300M full time jobs, including legal, administrative and engineering positions are at high global risk according to the reports of Goldman Sachs.

The danger of AI was also beheld during the recent wrestlers' protests in India, where with the help of AI, the picture uploaded by the wrestlers in Twitter was morphed to give a fake representation of the wrestlers accompanying the police gladly and leading the public to believe that they have some hidden agenda.

The accessibility to free voice cloning tools of AI and its ability to replicate accents have resulted in umpteen cases of voice scams and individual privacy is at threat.

The list goes on but a line from an article published by 'Medium' is apt to expound the entire situation very well. It goes like, "Artificial Intelligence can save democracy, unless it destroys it first."

Personalised educational processes, enhanced capability for Modelling Language, advanced Cyber security, Creative AI, Data-Centric AI are some of the forthcoming improvements promised by the technology of AI in the near future and few of them are already evolving.

However, since AI is rapidly growing progressively, there is no proof to hold that the current Weak AI will not be surpassed by the self-awareness type of AI or the super intelligent AI. It's not hyperbolic to say that if the Strong AI begins to exist, it would transcend the brightest and most adept human minds. It even has the potential to help humanity overcome its most pressing problems and challenges. The real conundrum arises when we develop something smarter than us that later we fail to understand vividly what it actually does and how. Once we achieve the AGI which can function like a human being, it wouldn’t stop at human intelligence level and may continue on getting more advanced to a level which makes us incapable to comprehend and results in the phenomena of 'Technological Singularity'.

With machine learning, super intelligent AI would be able to teach itself and improve by itself to an extent where it wouldn't need any human interaction or supervision to function. Since there is a difference between human intelligence and wisdom, it's not always necessary that this highly advanced AI would be wise having human like values and we would actually want it to be super intelligent human cyborgs.

It is a truth that AI has become an inevitable part of our lives and future is not too far away from those days when humans would represent the minority of intelligence. But we may think that they are literally machines and we could turn them off, right? However, if the Super intelligent AI after getting developed, learns through Internet and is connected to it, we have to remind ourselves that there is no switch off button for the Internet. And the changes are rapid.

So, what kind of world should we anticipate from AI? A world of hope or a world of fear or both?

The dilemma doesn't cease to exist; is AI a boon or a bane? The future wants to know.

Fathimathu Saliha k

IZZATHUL ISLAM ATHAZHAMKUNNU