Artificial Intelligence’s Threat to Mankind: Evolutionary Challenges

Due to recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), we are currently at a cusp of a serious transformation in business and technology. We are experiencing a new era in which the basic rules that we have a tendency to run our organizations are being rewritten daily. AI new systems don’t seem to be simply automating several processes but these are recreating them with additional methods of efficiency.

Human-Machine Collaboration for Excellence

Experts in the matter are allowing humans and machines to figure collaboratively ways to be at the top of our game in all aspects.

By doing so, they’re changing drastically the nature of labor required in the United States as we know it. For decades, robots and machines have been these huge pieces of machinery, typically operated by human staff, that would perform an avid task, unloading a stamping press, for instance. These usually heavy task was followed by a single or group of qualified employees that would supervise the work done by the machine in order to discard any possible defects or mistakes occurred in the process. Nowadays, it seems like we are the ones being supervised by machines in a daily basis. AI inventions have now the capacity to outstand us in labor, efficiency and speed.

Take for instance, An Assistive Robot is a device that can sense, process sensory information, and perform actions that benefit people with disabilities and seniors. Movement therapy robots provide a diagnostic or therapeutic benefit. But these are technologies that are largely, and unfortunately, still confined to the lab, as they’re still cost-prohibitive for most hospitals in the U.S. and abroad. Also, another example of these Smart Assistive Technology recent inventions for the general population, is the Driver assistance tools, or most commonly known as “ the lady that talks in the GPS”.

Embracing AI as an Opportunity

With these being stated, we know now that it is a fact. Artificial Intelligence is only rising in capacity and development. The question is, should we let these be a threat? Or instead, should we take serious, brave and decisive decisions in the matter and use it to our advantage? We, the world, are still wrapping our heads around an industry where we, the people, led the world. But experts on the AI field have done, still do and will keep doing such a dedicating and professional job that it can easily get overwhelming and give an idea that we will never catch up to it.

Human Creativity and AI Collaboration

Then, what should we do about it? I believe the answer to this should be simpler than we may picturing it is. We must see the future industries in technology as bigger, more transformational and exciting. This way, it will allow us to take full advantage of what it is to come. Productivity improvements on the production lines at factories, on the shop’s floors and even in mines also mean new experiences for workers as well. This represents a whole lot of good productive work happening in the existing operations that nowadays are managed by a large group of workers. Of course, this may represent a challenge for companies to make this transition and balance they original professional employees and these future in machines. Not only that, but financially, this progression would represent a solid monetary investment for any company. Then, how do you take a company from where it is today to where is going to be the future in this digital world that we keep hearing about and balance all the elements of that equation while undertaking that journey. The answer to all these questions, lays behind the single, most exciting transformative piece of technology that is driving of is that, called Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Along our careers, we see a number of keys to success and mastering AI, among with all its possibilities and capacity, but there is and specific one that I will highlight today. It is mindset, because as with most things in life, having the right mindset means you are much more likely to find what it is that you are looking for, than if you don’t. Relating what we talked about mindset to AI, we sort of need to undo what Hollywood has actually done over many years.

Moving Beyond the Hollywood Mindset

The classic “Hollywood mindset” is human versus machine. Take for instance, 2001 Space Odyssey, where an imposing black structure provides a connection between the past and the future in this enigmatic adaptation of a short story by revered sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke. When Dr. Dave Bowman, played by Keir Dullea, and other astronauts are sent on a mysterious mission, their ship’s computer system, HAL, begins to display increasingly strange behavior, leading up to a tense showdown between man and machine that results in a mind-bending trek through space and time. Another good example of this “Hollywood mindset” implanted through out the years is, the famous Terminator, where the central theme of these franchise of movies is the battle for survival between the nearly-extinct human race and the world-spanning Artificial Intelligence that is Skynet. Skynet is positioned in the first film as a U.S. strategic ‘Global Digital Defense Network’ computer system by Cyberdyne Systems which becomes self-aware. Upon activation, it immediately perceives all humans as a ‘security threat’, and formulates a plan to systematically wipe out humanity itself. The system initiates a nuclear first strike against Russia, thereby ensuring a devastating second strike and a nuclear holocaust which it anticipates will instantly wipe out much of humanity. To only mention a few.

Like that, many more Hollywood productions that have “brainwashed” us over the years. Making us think that it is a never-ending battle against the machines out there. Whereas, I believe that the mindset we all need is human plus machine to see the real value and the endless opportunities that we have in this world of AI.

Leveraging Human Intelligence with AI

Today in the world of AI, we are at an age where we have never seen AI technology move from basic experiments to hundreds of thousands of projects that have blown our minds. Artificial Intelligence I often viewed as complex and intimidating, a stereotype that has convinced many that we could never catch up to it. The way AI runs are incredibly simple and when utilized effectively, can help organizations save money and allow employees to work more productively.

But what do we have in advantage to it? Human’s brain creative thinking. About eight years ago, in 2010, Eric Schmidt said at a technology conference in Lake Tahoe, CA, “Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003… that’s something like five exabytes of data” he added. He was trying to wrap around the audience’s mind that we create as much information in two days then as we did from the dawn of man through 2003. That is mind-blowing.

The Future of AI and Human Evolution

Today, eight years later we handle so much more information, that it becomes almost impossible to manage without some assistance from computers. Not just a little assistance, but a lot. We are at a point where this volume of information in literally incomprehensive to human beings. “Big data is a term for data sets that are so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate”, Wikipedia Big data is when we talk about very voluminous and large amounts of data, but one of the key points is that it is very structured. These data sets are so large the we need machines to compute them for us, but since they are also very structured, they are not quite the same as comparing it to human’s way of thinking. Then how can we get the best of both worlds? This is when the mindset of Machine plus Human becomes the answer to it all. Managing large amounts of information can get very complex, very quickly. Imagine sorting through a years’ worth of work-related files and documents on the devices of employees throughout a company. Now imagine every document one may create in a lifetime, from school years to professional based documents developed at work or personal careers. We are now getting into a much larger piece of information. Now try to image every document every employee at a certain company creates in their own lifetime. Next, imagine not only the number of documents every staff member of an organization may produce in a lifetime, as a student and as a professional, but the amount of emails each receive in a lifetime. Let us be honest, for most of us, or all of us, the number of emails we receive daily, not to mention junk email, is beyond larger than the number of documents we purposely produce. Lastly, try to roughly add up the number of documents, the emails and the social media information we now handle in a lifetime, times each of the staff members that may work for an organization. This is what is called Big Data, and it is one only one of the examples that go to show how we are in need of machines to handle all of it.

AI as a Transformative Technology

We need something extremely intelligent and high on speed to compute the volume of content one collects in a lifetime. AI has the capacity to discard all this content of information, but always with the help of human intelligence. Not for nothing, it is called Artificial Intelligence, it is a kind in intelligence that has been programed by a human to develop under low or no supervision. AI has the ability to make decisions on whether or not the information it is given is meaningful or relevant to what we need, but then again, always based on the information previously provided by a human. That is the ultimate purpose in Big Data. A lot of technology applications, specially with Artificial Intelligence, have been in our developed for business use or for sale and marketing purposes. A series of algorithms and rules that are being used to track people, aggressively market to them or used to keep them on a website or social media page.

In my opinion, this will become outdated technology in the future. Using technology to manipulate people isn’t good for companies or people. I see this turning around within the next five years as we go through some challenging times in the US and worldwide. Many technology companies will start to work on solutions-based programs to help people evolve into the future and I believe that will be the solution for both parties, organizations and consumers. AI its not just a large part of a technological revolution, it is a major part of human evolution of going beyond the limits of the environmentally program human biological operating system.  

Work Cited

1. Müller, VC. “The Ethical and Social Implications of Artificial Intelligence.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2020
2. “Managing the Machines: How to Navigate the AI Hype and Implement AI in Business” – McKinsey & Company, 2018.
3. The Ethical and Social Implications of Artificial Intelligence” – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2020.

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