Towards an artificially intelligent future?
There are technological innovations happening all around us and a major trend in the past decade has been the application of “artificial intelligence” onto already existing technology.
As a result of that we now have smart mobile phones, smart watches, smart televisions, smart cars and even smart toilets (seriously)! And those are just examples of artificial intelligence in isolated devices. We are developing entire systems that need minimal human interference.
If we think about it, more than the immigrants it’s the machines that are taking away our jobs.
Initially only the blue collared jobs were taken over by the machines but now the machines are moving up the ranks. We’ve got websites acting as housing agents, supermarkets with hardly any staff, mobile phone apps that could possibly replace your mother (Siri)! This has got to stop! We need to come together as a specie, to guarantee our existence. Have we learnt nothing from Person of Interest??
On a serious note, we need to proceed with caution when it comes to artificial intelligence. In a quest to make life easy we are giving life to machines and it might just turn out to be apocalyptic in the long run. It is something that has got even Stephen Hawking worried. We are curious beings and we are going to press the “red button” when given a choice.
A major concern is definitely the advancements of AI in autonomous weapon systems. Recently, over 1,000 high-profile artificial intelligence experts and leading researchers have signed an open letter warning of a “military artificial intelligence arms race” and have called for a ban on autonomous weapon systems. The letter was presented at the international Join Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, and the signees include Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Stephen Hawking among others.
The letter states: “AI technology has reached a point where the deployment of [autonomous weapons] is – practically if not legally – feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.”
Here’s hoping we don’t end up creating one of these.
Author: Amogh Jain, 437457
Sources:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/27/musk-wozniak-hawking-ban-ai-autonomous-weapons
24 responses to “Towards an artificially intelligent future?”
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Information Strategy 
Great article. I completely agree with you.
Artificial intelligence is good but till a certain limit,Otherwise humans are gonna be over shadowed by it.
Have we learnt nothing from ‘ Person of Interest’ ? Haha,!Good stuff bro!
Haha I was hoping someone would get the POI reference 😀
Very informative !
Loved the reference you made to siri! 😀
Very nice article. Good job!!
good read, taught provoking
Definitely seems like valid take on things. Lot of people are moving into this area. And autonomous weapons systems is scary as fuck.
You might find reading about “internet of things” interesting
I just read a few pages about internet of things and I’m intrigued. It seems really interesting when you think about integrating a lot of devices together but a conspiracy theorist like me would say that they are just giving more data to a higher power, maybe an AI or maybe Illuminati! okay, i took it too further
Great read but a tad bit too paranoid, isn’t it ?
And I sure hope we don’t create an ultron !
It might seem paranoid to us because we haven’t been exposed to the full extent of artificial intelligence there is. Obviously we are far from being taken over by the machines but the researchers are in process of developing autonomous weapon systems that can fire without human instruction, the direction in which their research has gone is scary in itself.
North Korea has nuclear weapons-apparently.And if western propaganda is to be believed, the country is run by the most irrational person on the face of this planet.Machines would probably be more rational.
Good article brother, keep it going!
Haha the POI part. Artificial Intelligence has become associated with a lot of other aspects, which are well covered in this article. Well done.
Its a great subject bruh. Funny part was artificial toilets! Worth to ponder. Seriously good article!
Nobody wants this to happen, we have to take control now!
Great article and references 🙂
The whole idea of AI is commendable seeing how fast this has been catching up this decade but given the advancements in Autonomous Weapon Systems, this is taking it too far.
Creating competence isn’t enough alone as much as getting it in the right direction. After all, the worst things that had ever occured in human history were out of best intentions.
Precisely, you get the point. The same had happened with nuclear energy, it was meant to be this breakthrough technology that was going to solve our energy requirements but it ended up being one of the most devastating things known to mankind.
A good article which contains lots of information, enhancing the concept of artificial intelligence.Appreciable for the work you have done
Amazing read and good references bro, AI is taking over more fields than we can imagine and it is only going to get worse in the years to come if nothing is done to control and monitor its expansions.
That was really well said Amogh
Especially the references !!!
A few very good points made! Siri, is listening 😄
And yes, there is going to be warfare revolution , pretty inevitable!
Interesting article! Especially the points you raise about autonomous weapon systems are a great concern for the future.
As a critical note, I think you could differentiate between AI and automation more clearly. For instance, websites replacing travel agents are not forms of AI but of automation. Same goes for the way workers have been replaced by machinery at many factories.
However, the big difference between AI and automation is that robots with artificial intelligent are able to learn new things by themselves, in stead of just being able to execute what they are programmed to do.
An example of this is the robot Baxter. This robot can learn to perform tasks by seeing humans do it. For example, here you can see Baxter as a bartender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeTs9tLsUmc&list=UUpSQ-euTEYaq5VtmEWukyiQ
There are many examples of jobs that can be replaced by robots with AI. One of the best videos on this is called ‘Human Need Not Apply’ by CGP Grey. He shows how AI came to be and how it can affect a lot of blue and white collar jobs in the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
I agree with you that the examples of websites replacing travel agents and machines replacing workers are examples of automation and not Artificial Intelligence, I had used those examples to dramatize a broad scheme of advancements that are happening and in what direction they are heading.
The video “Human need not apply” seems really interesting and aptly portrays what kind of jobs can be taken over by AI systems.
Thank you for the constructive critique! 🙂
Interesting article Amoghj!
If you’re interested in reading a complementary post about the potential of AI, you can find what I wrote on the following link. I am exposing the different AI camps, in order to allow the reader to construct his own judgment on the case.
https://informationstrategyrsm.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=10985&action=edit
A little critique though on the current AI threat outcry:
Quite some leading AI experts are actually skeptical about the life-changing impact AI will have in the coming years. One of the leading deep learning & machine learning experts, Andrew Ng, founder of Coursera and chief scientist at Baidu; stated that :” worrying about AI turning evil would be equivalent to worrying about a Mars overpopulation”.
What could be clarified in your post, is whether you are mentioning the short term threats of AI or rather its mid-term and long-term impact.
Indeed, what is interesting to notice is the decision power AI has in the military.
Some drones can already make independent decisions on whether to kill human targets. A war fought entirely with machines –stripping all human decisions away- is a gloomy prospect to envisage.
The scary part is that it is happening now!
The Ted talk by Daniel Suarez, summarizes this well.
To come back to this open letter, I am afraid we as individuals have a limited impact in shaping this debate. The government indeed plays the main role in shaping and making sure this AI debate will turn out for the best. However, we also know the biggest entities tend to be the slowest movers.
It is therefore important that our voice be heard. If enough people get wind of this issue and become adequately educated on the risks posed by AI; the government(s) will naturally follow the pace.
Every person can already start by signing that open letter on the following link http://futureoflife.org/AI/open_letter .
Some other sources
http://www.wired.com/brandlab/2015/05/andrew-ng-deep-learning-mandate-humans-not-just-machines/