There is lot of news all around us on AI these days. Automated Robots, self-driving cars, game playing using AI, to mention a few. Some would even say— “Data is the new oil and AI the new electricity”. And some fear about AI taking away jobs. Well myths are there for everything in world and myths are always good when better clarified. Yes, AI is happening but we all need AI, there are way too many reasons for it. And there is no denying in coming times we may need even more AI. So, what about these myths. Well, this article is all about these facts, clarifying myths, as per my views. Some may think differently, but this is what can be understood given the plethora of works I have read and analyzed over past many years or even decades. Though Artificial Intelligence was jargoned long time back – with the famous Turing test determining whether a machine is Artificially intelligent or not——but it was never a pre-dominant thing before as it is now! As data is increasing exponentially and hence the need to understand it !!!!
Yes, data is new oil—-it is really new—it was never there before in this huge amount. We never had servers, never had so much of written texts accumulated in distributed systems across the globe. To summarize in short—the huge BIG DATA —was absent in our history book. Was it there ? NO ! And were data servers therein geography ? No. Was cybersecurity there in our civics books? NO….and so on…. And, whenever a new thing comes in human life and wherever it comes it brings to itself both the new challenges and new problems too. The new challenges faced by humans were how to deal with huge amount of image, text, audio, video data. How to search, extract, comprehend such data to start with. Then how to do more complicated tasks on data— which include image recognition, video processing, machine translation, to mention a few. Tasks such as assisting humans also originated much in native stage of development of AI but Computer Science and Technology was not that adept to support it then. Data was there but in conversations, papers, maps, paintings and among us but not stored anywhere. The hardware and software development laid a deep root in the success of AI spread!
Yes a machine can act intelligently but it has to be switched on by humans ! Yes, we all will love to sit on driving seat in an automatic car—but can we trust it in an unknown event—on which it has not been trained to work leave aside being tested. For instance, a sudden lighting from sky—what would be the machines’ reaction. Well a human is sitting on the driving seat so why worry? Right! It is not taking away the job of a driver in this way. This was a small example. There is a long way to go. In the same way in any manufacturing unit—it is good to let automatic robots do the job which are hazardous or dangerous to humans. Neither the population and demands in history were so high nor the needs of people. It is all changing at a fast rate, just to reach an equilibrium when new things will come up. New challenges will come up and new focus may be set. That how industrial revolution came and passed by. We still have industries, new jobs are created for new roles, new areas. In the same way we are going through Artificial Intelligence Revolution after the Computer Revolution. This is pass by as Industrial Revolution in history books. It shall make permanent changes, some temporary modifications and many important useful things to use and benefit from.
AI can be good or bad…Well I am myself an AI researcher and there is huge need for autonomous systems which self-train with humans. May be on based on learning with feedbacks from humans. These systems work well in case they are needed anywhere. I do see their use on setting up colonies on Mars! What a nice way to view a well set up colony on Mars for holiday or retirement plans? Why AI? Why not humans to do this task? Well, it took us centuries to reach this point of developments—and when we have AI why should we worry!
What is needed is a global corporation in this area for developments with mutual sharing of ideas, purpose, standards, futures tasks….. Alone we can move a wall but together a mountain!
More to come soon!