AI is a menace or a blessing? You have to decide!
By: Jayashree Gokulakrishnan.
Of the many technologies that are on the horizon, none as much history as Artificial Intelligence, although its academic origins are traced to 1950’s, appearances in science fiction throughout the past century have helped embed AI into the main stream. The type of intelligence is ‘assisted’ or ‘augmented’ in computing the potential of technology.
The term ‘AI’ Simply refers to making computers act more intelligently. Norvig and Russel go on to explore four different approaches in the field of AI:
Thinking humanly
Thinking rationally
Acting humanly
Acting rationally
The first two ideas concern through process and reasoning, while the others deal with behaviors. In the 2015 movie, ‘Avengers: The Age of Ultron’, Tony stark creates Ultron (Program). The main purpose is to maintain peace, but it backfires and wipeout humanity with a meteor. In 2011, Watson competed on the game show Jeopardy, against former winners. He defeated them and it showed that AI could do amazing things in real life. IBM developed the blue and the Watson computer system.
The HAL -9000 from the 1968 film ‘2001: A space Odyssey’ is one of the first thing to explore about AI with malicious content. The homicidal HAL (Heuristically Programmed Algorithm Computers) works effectively to achieve the mission to Jupiter.
In the movie ‘Zathura’, two boys find a board game which seems to be ordinary board game. But the things in the game started to happen in real life. One of the fascinating things in the movie is the robot which goes haywire but fixed by a card with “reprogram” written on it, indicating how robots reacts to commands.
In some movies, some robots are depicted as droids who can think and act themselves independent of human inventions. In the movie ‘Terminator’ , a cyberdyne system builds am AI Skynet as a defense mechanism and gives control over military hardware. The cyberdyne system inflamed a nuclear war and sends the terminator back in time.
In the movie Iron man, J.A.R.V.I.S. (Just A Rather Very Intelligence System) a specific program used to operate mechanical suits
AI is making a comeback with Facebook’s facial recognition software, Apple’s SIRI and Google developing cars. AI plays a major role in the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with Google and other search engines. In Customer Relationship Management (CRM), AI is deployed by SaaS behemoth salesforce.com. AI helps by providing myriad of data about customers demographics.
In the movie ‘I robot’ , V.I.K.I (Virtual Interactive Kinesthetic Interface) is the program used to enslave humanity.
Chat-bots programmed with AI can store data. It can also be programmed to do difficult tasks like deep - sea diving or wiping windows of skyscrapers.
We may be afraid that AI could take over the jobs of human beings. It’s not true. AI could increase employment as we don’t have the opportunities of droids. AI isn’t iniquitous.
AI is a menace or a blessing? You have to decide.
Read part-02 which is more interesting about Humanoids.