Advancements in AI (Artificial Intelligence) – Blessing or Curse ?

The information being fed to a normal person in today’s world is unprecedented. There is so much to consume & make sense of this information in daily routine that we often find ourselves in complex dilemmas. We often tend to change our position and stands we took once that information really sinks in to us. Often times, it’s late to go back or correct ourselves without consequences.

From the innovations like computers driving the cars, parking in garages to suggesting a movie or drink we would like, we are starting to see the affects of AI  in our day to day activities. Instead of designing code and let computer do what we ask computer to do, we are now entering in the world where we want our computers to take the behavioral data, become smart and then to recommend what we as humans should do or rather interpret what we will like in a particular moment.

AI  is like replacing a “constant value” with a variable “x” and let computer come up with that value of x dynamically based on time, place, person, mood etc. The for rating AI as good is when it is able to return you what you would have picked as a choice. In short, able to understand how your brain works and help you get something without you having to make that choice.

It sounds simple but the algorithms behind it are complicated. For example, if you want to watch a movie at home, it first needs to understand your “kind” of movies, drama, sci-fi, horror etc, then plug day (weekday night or weekend) time you are trying to watch, the place you are logged in (public or private place (location)) are some of the parameters it has to consider and then come back with the list of movies. There are many other aspects to complicate this further in-order to lets say build a menu for you to pick from.

In comes, machine learning :: If we are able to learn & build a pattern based on prior usage of information, the better chance we have to suggest & predict what you are looking for. As long as AI is consistent and achieves results which are expected, we tend to believe that it can serve greater purpose. But, in all honesty we will see the patterns emerge based on ethinicity, religion, culture, color and race we are bound to see AI acting very similar to the notions we humans have built. It is this lack of “human-ness” which computers or machine might never understand which could take this behavior to next levels of racism by machines itself.

I think we have to maintain a fine line when it comes to reaction of machines based on self-learning done by these machines. One might argue that it is the data which speaks and try to justify the way computer reacts but that is where it might be necessary to have controls.

Some of the notions and misconceptions will be clearly de-bunked based on data and we might be able to remove most of the bias(es) we see in today’s world. This is a blessing. It might be a curse in some other scenarios where computers/machines are not able to learn the sensitivity & other context(s) and come up with a model which could cause a racist response.

Some of the outcomes are not so serious and we could be ok  to live with that considering the benefits it is able to give us. The ones more threatening & treacherous will be something which could impact people directly and could cause physical or mental damage or something which would put certain group of people in brackets which are based on some bad apples among them and not a norm.

 

…In Progress

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *