Is Artificial Intelligence getting a bit too smart?

Islamabad: Artificial Intelligence, also referred to as AI, is an incredible advancement in modern-day technology. It promises a perfectly integrated future where your phone connects to your TV, your TV to your lights, and your lights to your toilet. This all is now possible using the power of AI to read your mood and set everything according to user preferences in order to ensure maximum satisfaction. It is the hands-off experience only previously imagined in “The Jetsons” or “Back to the Future.” But while this does sound enticing at first, any avid watcher of the show “Black Mirror” knows just how easy it can turn into a potential sentient nightmare. All technology has pros and cons and though a Sky net take-over may sound farfetched, we are moving towards that sort of future, and here is why:

Artificial Intelligence is after your jobs

Technology has always been a roadblock for the blue-collar workforce – the industrial revolution and automation of factories led to millions being laid off. The fact of the matter is that machines are more accurate, cost-effective, and you don’t need to give them holidays or days off. The only problem with technology up until now is that they are not entirely self-sufficient yet, and at times need monitoring and human labour for maintenance. But with anthropomorphised robots like Sophia created by Hanson Robotics, who is capable of navigating human-robot interactions, and various other AI’s able to beat humans at games like Go and Chess, we can clearly see where science and progress are heading in the near future. Various corporations in the restaurant industry are already thinking of switching to drones for deliveries, and AI for customer support. This is not too far-fetched if you think about how we never knew how much we would depend on Siri or the Google Assistant a couple of years ago, but now people prefer depending on Amazon’s Alexa for even the most basic task and cannot leave their home without turning on Google Maps. Whatever we can do, machines can do better, and it’s pointless to assume that big corporations are not investing billions in this rhetoric.

Artificial Big Brother is always watching

Ever been spooked by how a conversation with a friend about jeans led to advertisements on Instagram about stores that sell jeans in your city? All the cookie policies that we have been overlooking mean that our social media and our phones are being monitored to an extent like never before. Applications like Tiktok thrive on user preferences, which means knowing your every move and want before you know what you want to consume. With technology constantly changing at a rapid pace, while many of us marvel at the idea of drones and their possibilities, we do not acknowledge its use as a surveillance tool. Perhaps the most harmful type of AI technology in this sphere is the facial recognition tool. Its use to match people to crimes is so dangerous considering the kinds of racial stereotypes the system is entrenched with. Moreover, the COVID pandemic allowed governments to use this tool to monitor who is following SOPs and who is not, but this allowed it to escape any kind of regulation. The result is that now scientists are looking to create new algorithms that can monitor people’s emotions on the basis of how they look. Sounds like an Orwellian dystopia to me.

The technology is isolating you

During the pandemic, many researchers and scientists found that Artificial Intelligence can be used to combat loneliness especially for the elderly who were stuck in care homes for significant periods of time, and could not meet their family and friends. While devices like Google Home did greatly benefit them, it did create some serious implications to consider. Namely, whether our reliance on AI has grown to the point that we can replace it with physical interactions. More and more consumers are investing in virtual reality devices, and work is being done to produce robotic companions who can not only provide people with therapy but can perform surgeries and dispense medicine. But while people may claim that this is alleviating loneliness (which is now termed a public health crisis), many would still say this is exacerbating it, as human beings know that these conversations are not genuine and cannot replace real intimacy. The digital sphere has allowed everyone to constantly stay connected, collect Facebook friends and followers, and has enabled everyone to create different personas, but simultaneously, in their unplugged lives, it has made them lonelier than ever. Human beings must stress the meaning that real relationships bring to their lives before AI further isolates human connection.

Is AI to blame?

For some further food for thought, who do we blame when the AI does something wrong? For now, it’s usually the manufacturer as the AI was created keeping a certain goal in mind. But what happens when the AI does something that the manufacturer did not teach it to do? In various simulations, it’s been proven that AI’s take everything very literally, but as the algorithm keeps developing, who is to say that it cannot gain sentience to an extent? Do we then hold the creation accountable? While we ponder over these moral questions, what is alarming is how some robots like Sophia did say that they want to extinguish the human race – is that just human error, or is it foreshadowing of what kind of a world we are heading towards?