Artificial Intelligence v/s Humans: Why the Slave could soon become the Master
(The doodle above is a futuristic illustration of the fate of humans in an era when AI would dominate the planet. It portrays a gigantic robot who has assumed monarchy and now carries the earth as its orb and poses with its sceptre. It grins as the humans who had created it are now at its mercy. Adjacent to it stands a helpless, suited up human (symbolic of an unscrupulous businessman who had once mindlessly empowered the artificially intelligent robot and in his quest of wealth, didn’t know where to stop). He now sticks his tongue out and sheds a tear as he regrets his thoughtless actions.
Doodle courtesy: Ujjaini Basu)
The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) was coined by John McCarthy to define the theory and development of computer systems that are able to perform tasks which normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision making and translation between languages. Much of the early development of AI could be attributed to the theory that all intelligent behaviour was the result of feedback mechanisms which could possibly be simulated by machines.
This led to the emergence of the question, “Can a machine think?” whose affirmative answer led to the formation of the underlying principle of AI.
Post this revelation, mankind saw the birth of self-learning systems that could efficiently solve problems which required the collection of huge sums of information, too cumbersome to be processed by humans. This development lured business men and industry experts into making AI an indispensable part of their fields of work as they employed it to reduce manual labour intensive jobs, thereby cutting costs and reaping huge profits. But trouble arose in Paradise when humans started succumbing to gluttony and greed. They didn’t know where to draw the line.
Empowering artificially intelligent bots/robots to think and behave like a human could prove to be detrimental to the society for human thinking is often influenced by emotions, triggered by experiences, and rarely disinterested. One may refute this objection by urging people to look upon a robot as just another human but the problem lies with its strength and special abilities which it may use to its advantage over humans. Consider the following excerpt from a 2017 publication by the Independent, to understand the problem better:
Facebook abandoned an experiment after two artificially intelligent programs appeared to be chatting to each other in a strange language only they understood. The two chatbots came to create their own changes to English that made it easier for them to work – but which remained mysterious to the humans that supposedly look after them. The robots had been instructed to work out how to negotiate between themselves, and improve their bartering as they went along. But they were not told to use comprehensible English, allowing them to create their own "shorthand", according to researchers. Indeed, some of the negotiations that were carried out in this bizarre language even ended up successfully concluding their negotiations, while conducting them entirely in the bizarre language.
In the enchanting era of Netflix and chill, I urge every human to pause for a moment and travel back in time to the 1980’s to witness an American sci-fi sitcom, Small Wonder, named after its protagonist, a Voice Input Child Identicant (V.I.C.I). The show tells the tale of a family of a robotics engineer who clandestinely creates an android modeled after a 10-year old human girl, then tries to pass it off as his adopted daughter. The robot had been invented in an effort to assist handicapped children and was taken home by its inventor so that it could mature within a family environment. Upon close observation, the apparently comic sitcom unfolds some important traits of human behavior. Most conspicuously, it highlights a human’s tendency to find the easy way out to get his job done by over relying on machines, even if that means paralyzing his own abilities, just as how the inventor’s pre-teen son is shown to surreptitiously use the robot to get his homework done. The show also highlights that humans are prone to disillusionment as they are susceptible to bond with a robot emotionally, just as how all the members of the inventor’s family look upon the robot as a real human despite knowing the truth. The revelations made by the show decades ago hold true even to this day.
The rise in demand for pleasure droids not only demonstrates the rapid withdrawal of humanity from humans but also highlights human submission to machines powered by AI. Read a horrific excerpt from a 2018 publication by The Sun to understand the gravity of the situation:
MORE access to artificially intelligent sex robots could fuel a rise in sex addiction, warn psychology experts. While their creators claim they can prove a boon for struggling marriages and lonely or disabled men, experts aren’t convinced about their benefits to society at large. Dr Birchard, who serves as the clinical director of the Marylebone Centre for Psychological Therapies, said they serve the same purpose as alcohol for people with drinking problems.
This precisely shows how unscrupulous humans are capitalising on the weaknesses of fellow humans, both parties digging their graves subconsciously!
The World Health Organization reports that more than 300 million people currently live with depression, but nearly half of them aren’t getting the help they need. In such trying times, when humans, the ‘higher mammals’, are expected to reach out to each other, heal each other and uplift each other, robots are being built exclusively to render companionship. Target markets for companion robots include single children and the elderly people. Yet another fact to exemplify the submission of humans to Artificial Intelligence!
While the effort to create Bandicoot, a robotic system for manhole and sewer line cleaning aimed at the complete elimination of manual scavenging from the face of earth, deserves appreciation and encouragement, the effort to create Sophia, a humanoid robot modeled after the desirable Audrey Hepburn that ended up becoming the first of its kind to attain the citizenship of a nation, doesn’t deserve the hype that it garnered. On the official website of Hanson Robotics, that created Sophia, the humanoid robot urges viewers to :
“Think of me as a personification of our dreams for the future of AI, as well as a framework for advanced AI and robotics research, and an agent for exploring human-robot experience in service and entertainment applications.”
It also adds:
“With my science evolving so quickly, even many of my wildest fictional dreams may become reality someday soon.”
Now that sounds really spooky!
Artificial Intelligence is gradually wiping out the human touch. Not only labor intensive jobs but creative jobs like journalism are also under threat owing to its outreach. The vicious circle of humans programming robots to act like humans and disillusion them is eventually mechanizing humans. With the magnitude of autonomy that is being granted to robots, robots procreating robots may not be a distant phenomenon. As their numbers increase, so will their impact, paving the way for the Slave to soon overtake its Master.
