​Artificial Intelligence: Friend or Foe?

I think it is time to call James Bond and tell him that the world is enough, because Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here and it is going to make sure that our future is taken care of.

If there is one scientific development that time and again is made to eat the humble pie despite the innumerable comforts it provides for its masters, it is AI.

What is AI?

In the scientific terms, it is nothing but a shaken and stirred concoction of diverse, analytical, and abstract algorithms inspired by several facets of mainstream or in a much accepted reality - natural intelligence.

Many a times, the things we are so close to and attached to are the ones we fear will grow out of us. It is precisely when we begin to get paranoid that one day it might leave our hand and go away. Think about it. Every piece of gadget you and I own is enabled with some form of intelligence. It is not capable of functioning on its own without the brain that another man has provided for it. In the absence of this ability for it to think and act, the gadget is just a piece of metal or plastic or whatever form it has been given, just as we are given the form of flesh and blood. But is AI really as fatal as it is projected to be?

At Zeitgeist 2015 conference in London, Stephen Hawking, the world-famous physicist, said that Computers would be overtaking humans in the next 100 years. And he feels that before that moment we have to ensure that their goals are aligned with ours. Earlier in December, he told BBC that if due care is not taken to monitor AI, then we could expect the end of human race pretty soon.

Other experts in the field may not share the exact extremist views about AI as Stephen Hawking, but tech experts and thought leaders across the world are in the same boundary of concern.

Bill Gates in the Ask Me Anything thread on Reddit agreed with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk about the latter's open letter (upheld by Stephen Hawking) that urged caution toward developing Artificial Intelligence way forward.

Further, the physicist and entrepreneur, Louis Del Monte, when speaking to the former Business Insider reporter Dylan Love had quoted that in the absence of legislations regarding how much intelligence a machine can possess, how much network and interconnectability it can be equipped with, and if all these features are uninhibitedly looked at on an exponential pedestal, there would be no qualms in reaching that singularity of timeframe all the right people are anticipating and from that moment forward the top species will no longer be humans, but the machines.

Contrary to the experts and the naysayers, when we look at the world of artificial intelligence we see usability, reliability, user-friendliness, heightened user-experience, convenience, and a state of freedom and assistance never experienced by man before today.

Information: Everything we type and do with that internet switch turned on is valuable data for somebody who is waiting to create something for you and me. But the data collected from people like us are in multiples of billions computed at irrational speeds that could not be fathomed by man alone. AI will be able to search, analyse, interpret and deliver better results than normal or traditional indexing and data processing methods can vouch for.

Experience: We are at a stage, where we need assistance from time to time to tell us what we might possibly be looking for. AI's constantly developing infrastructure provides an autonomous and automatic diagnosis, understanding the needs of the user through maps, patterns, abstraction and deep level learning that helps create better user experiences by providing more accurate results for the concerned query or need.

Prediction: Since artificial intelligence is built on the philosophy that prevention is better than cure, AI preemptively helps detect the bad plums. As only a minute percentage of transactions are undertaken offline, and the remaining online, it is important to ensure that there are no faulty or fraudulent transactions, and in the event of one – to have it nipped in the bud. AI has given man the atmosphere to take better decisions in extremely short windows, with its innate ability to assess, predict and fixate.

Artificial intelligence is here to stay to help us evolve. Its intentions might be exaggerated and overrated. We may fear that when the time comes, it will depart from us leaving us to our own misery. But for the time being, what we really have to be concerned about is the present of the future, which is going at a progressive pace. Perhaps, it is us who have to be conscious about the input of our life in the lifestyle of technology we have chosen to make our lives easier and better.

As Google co-founder and CEO, Larry Page told the Financial Times last year, “You can't wish away these things from happening. They are going to happen. You are going to have some very amazing capabilities in the economy. When we have computers that can do more jobs, it's going to change how we think about work. There is no way around that. You can't wish it away.”
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