THE RISE OF AI - FEAR BEFORE THE DAWN

By mahvash khan February 27, 2023

Like the hours before the dawn appear murky, skepticism hits our psyche right before the world witnesses a technological breakthrough.

This century, we are engrossed in a mind-bending dialogue with ourselves whether Artificial Intelligence is going to be a Frankenstein experience or a 21st-century mega invention.

Image:Pixabay-darksouls1

My two cents to the world would rather be to not indulge in dialogue but to look at both the parameters and decide for ourselves how we maneuver around it.

Take a moment with me and peek, not too far, but only in the 19th and 20th centuries. Skim through the brouhaha and behold the wonders of Telegraph, Sewing Machine, Photography, Internet, Television, and many more.

These are only a few jargons to name and much to our anticipation, they brought immense commotion along with relief in disbelief to our lives. However, it has always been up to us whether we let these things spoil us or use them judiciously for our benefit.

It is as simple as understanding the difference between good and bad habits.

Fear:

Fear around AI is basically regarding its man-made robotic skills becoming sentient and challenging the human race to extinction. User experience has brought its dark sides to light. Well, the experts opine that massive tweaking and touch-basing will get the 'gear' to work as designed without posing a threat to us.

Image: Pixabay-Ryan Mcguire

Are we too naïve to imagine that the invention of wheel wouldn't have caused a far-exaggerated reaction?

What about the telegraph and telephone? Oh, well I am sure the ravens wouldn't have cared at all!

And the funniest paranoia goes about Trains. People expressed concerns that traveling by train would throw uteruses out of the bodies of women! New technology has always been scary-Christian Keil

Image: Google

Einstein's adage is quite a showstopper here -

'I fear the day when technology overlaps our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots.'

He chose to say overlap instead of replace for the simple reason that we are very much capable of burying ourselves in our sweet comfort zone. The fear, doubt, or reluctance is an indication of our pitfalls, believing in our ability to become complacent in the face of comfort. There is no place for fear as long as we do not let ourselves become complacent.

The times, we let our technology do everything for us without understanding what goes behind the scene, is a shortcut to becoming idiots with gadgets.

Take the example of an automatic car. If a person who drives does not understand how a car's gears function, would he/she ever know what goes behind the scene? Sure, one can let technology do things but it should not be at the cost of knowledge and information.

Image: Google

Beyond The Fear:

Can we imagine how it would benefit us in eliminating financial frauds that are currently really wreaking havoc and have quite a potential to jeopardize financial stability?

Here's an expert view for your perusal.

Uses of AI in Finance

And how much you or I would want a system to easily inform what food, medicine, or skincare products would be specifically useful?

I am already looking forward to holding my DNA blueprint in a language I prefer, in my hands while I put a timer on my 'instant snack machine'.

Image: Google

Who knows, one day it may enable us to indeed travel far off with the speed of light, totally evolving how we see long-distance relationships and enabling long-lost friends to catch up again.

We wouldn't need another Lloyd Devereux to wait a decade to become a best-selling author. AI would do the speedy marketing already.USATODAY-Lloyd Devereux Richards's book

No one can tell the future but it can be predicted and forecasted.

The existence of AI predicts a smoother ride toward learning experiences for students as did the Internet, once upon a time!

If such apprehensions about AI taking over the human race were true, each one of us would have been wiped off the face of the earth already after the inventions of Internet or a Smartwatch or Prosthetics.

Silver Lining:

All these mushy beneficial expectations do not rule out its potential to be used as a mass surveillance tool.

Haven't we (Before-Internet-People) reminisced school days thinking what if we too had the luxury of Internet and Google to speed up our learning process? Indeed, there are chances of plagiarism but when has it not been?

The other day, newsrooms had a tell tale about how a well-known publishing house had to stop accepting submissions in the wake of AI-generated stories. Quite a day must have been! When have we not witnessed an idea getting misused? In turn, that would call for a more human-enabled involvement and ethics to curb the misuse.

AI is an extension of the human intellect, not a replacement! Just like a new generation of people are our ancestors' extension with the ability to transform the world and not annihilate the human race.