EF Challenge
Once I heard the question I could not think of anything specific because there are so many things that worry me right now, such as climate change, ecological collapse, overpopulation, poverty, malnutrition, and so many more, but we’ve all heard of poverty and malnutrition in Africa, about climate change and its impact, about the ecological collapse; however, I don’t know if you have ever heard about artificial intelligence as a concerning issue.
Can you imagine going on a bus seeing a humanoid robot
and having a natural conversation with it just like if you were talking with a normal person? a robot that can reason, just as a human himself? Or can you imagine you’re going into your classroom and instead of seeing teachers there’s a robot teaching, for example, language arts or science and you can actually analyze the topic as if were being taught by a regular teacher?
Today’s world is trying to go there and we are getting closer every time. Nowadays, there’s for sure a robot called Sophia that can have a conversation with someone else and really look at you into your eyes, but she is not that much as a true human because she cannot make a speech by herself nor have such a natural conversation with anyone. Her artificial intelligence has been misunderstood because of offering itself as something more advanced than it actually is. She is close to what we are looking for a humanoid robot that can do the exact same things as a human does.
Every age has its scientific discoveries and inventions. Nevertheless, today’s scientific advancements can impact globally in such a short time and so is the progress made in the field of artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence itself is the creation of intelligent systems or machines that can work and react like humans, imitating their intelligence and getting better and faster answers, by taking into account what they have answered before or the information that has been given to them before.
But with all that we’ve talked about, If artificial intelligence creates automated jobs as a whole, will that replace much of human skill and labor? That might be an interesting question for many. Or will artificial intelligence create more careers or at least offer a few career paths which intelligent kids might be tempted to pursue?
Some examples of artificial intelligence can be the voice assistance that it is actually in houses; for example, there’s one that is called Alexa or Hey Google who's a voice assistance that has artificial intelligence because it recognizes you once you call it by its name and can obey orders that you give them, such as turning your room lights off or playing music. Another example could be the cellphone itself, or to be more specific, Instagram; let’s say that you like makeup, so you start following and watching tutorials about makeup, then Instagram will put you advertisements about makeup, but later you start liking posts about animals and without you searching about it, Instagram will start to show you posts about animals.
So, it is like this instance that artificial intelligence improves its answers, taking into account the information that it receives. Moreover, have you ever asked yourself why Instagram always knows what to show you or how it even knows anything that you’ve searched in your cell phone, but not on Instagram, but it manages to appear there? Well, this is all artificial intelligence because it takes the information from your phone, so that it can improve its answers and show you what you’re interested in.
As you can see, AI has probably changed the way you do many things already, and with major improvements being worked all the time; therefore, AI can become many times more powerful than it is now.
What science and technology are trying to create is superintelligence that can outperform human beings, not just in a specific task, but in a complex cognitive activity, which includes decision making, problem-solving, memory, speech recognition, attention, and judgement.
This can lead mankind to a life of ease, like never known before, when a lot of what they had to perform is done to perfection with the help of AI through aided robots or machines. But then, there is a danger here. What if AI threw, by some chance or misjudged human calculation acquires smarter intelligence that can control human beings or wreck disasters unheard of?
Yes, there are benefits of AI that we are yet to see, that far outweigh these assumed dangers. Soon someday, what about if what many thought as Science Fiction, from which people read about in novels or watched in movies, as many depicted a fictional future becomes real and operational?
Well, let me conclude that it was a time called the beginning, when God created man in his image and likeness. Nonetheless, man running independently of God is capable of acting indeed by far with other purposes different from which mankind was created. We see the impact of that in the environment as well, through this senseless destruction caused by wars and man’s greed.
Likewise, AI was created by men to have the complex ability to think and act like human beings, in destructive modes, as if something goes wrong. Hacking and programming errors or even robots starting to communicate with each other in a language that no man would be able to understand, can then easily be the nightmares of tomorrow.
When Artificial Intelligence becomes more popular and is being used more frequently in the fields that it can be, it will be an even greater influence on the way we do things. So where do you think Artificial Intelligence will take us?
“Our intelligence is what makes us human, and AI is an extension of that quality.” – Yann LeCun Professor, New York University.
By Keily Valdivieso, Step 9
