Will Artificial Intelligence Give Humans More Freedom or Rob Us of It

Technology has come a long way from the earliest days of technology such as stone tools to the supercomputers we have today. Technology is there to makes our lives easier and much of the artificial intelligence that we use today is there to make our daily tasks easier. Artificial Intelligence isn’t anything new per se but it is becoming more intelligent each and everyday.

John McCarthy, an American computer scientist, first introduced Artificial Intelligence to us back in 1956. Today the definition of artificial intelligence is “the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages” (Oxford Dictionary, n.d.). Much of the artificial intelligence that we use today is to provide better services and to create better products that works alongside the actual expertise of a real human rather than replace the human (Marr, 2018). Artificial Intelligence is continuously transforming the way we live our everyday lives.

It has slowly but surly become a part of everything we do. We use artificial intelligence to vacuum our homes with home robots such as The Roomba, or we can use our google homes to do the simplest tasks for us, such as order our pizza, turn on our TV’s or even pick our lottery numbers for us. There are even self-driving cars such as the Tesla that allows drivers to sit back and relax while the vehicle does all the work. The field of artificial intelligence is growing everyday and with this progressive growth comes its advantages and disadvantages. On one side of the artificial intelligence world, we have the idea that we are going to be working alongside a technology that is going to help us with our work and be there when we are in need of help. On the other side, we have the idea that people can easily be replaced with these artificial intelligence technologies, and one day they may just take over all our jobs.

Artificial intelligence or the Fourth Industrial Revolution

This age of artificial intelligence can also be classified as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Apart of this revolution includes things such as smart systems- homes, factories, farms, grids or cities- and with the help of artificial intelligence we will be able to tackle problems ranging from supply chain management to bigger problems such as climate change (Leopold, Zahidi, Ratcheva, 2017). The first industrial revolution began around 230 years ago in 1784 with the rise of water and steam in the mechanical production of railroads, electricity and many other inventions that have made society what it is today (Bloem, Van Doorn, Duivestein, Excoffier, Maas, Ommeren, 2014). Without this first industrial revolution, things would be very different today. The second industrial revolution was believed to begin around the beginning of the 20th century in which we see the introduction of mass production and conveyor belts in the workforce industries (Bloem, Van Doorn, Duivestein, Excoffier, Maas, Ommeren, 2014).

The Ford plant used the assembly line during this second industrial revolution, and this method is still used to this day and many factories across the world. Most notable from the second industrial revolution are Henry Ford and Fredrick Taylor whom both are linked to some of the major revolutions occurring during this era (Bloem, Van Doorn, Duivestein, Excoffier, Maas, Ommeren, 2014). With the third industrial revolution beginning in the second half of the 20th century, this being the digital automation revolution where we witness the rise of many of the electronics we use today such as computers and telecommunications (Bloem, Van Doorn, Duivestein, Excoffier, Maas, Ommeren, 2014). Without this revolution, we would not have any of the technologies that we are currently attached to such as our laptops and cellphones. The fourth industrial revolution we are seeing today is building upon what we’ve seen occur in the third industrial revolution, it is a merge of the technologies from the third revolution. For example, one of the major areas which the implementation of artificial intelligence has had immense impacts would be the workforce. Artificial intelligence in this area has made transformations to the industries that we would never have imagined. Artificial intelligence machines work from the health care field to the finance field to even the travel and transportation areas. Machines that we see in the sci-fi movies where the robot takes over and humans are doomed don’t exist, yet at least, or hopefully anytime soon, but the types of machines that involve artificial intelligence vary greatly.

The biggest worry some probably have is that these machines are going to take over our jobs and our lives. The ever-growing technology sector is most likely going to be a very challenging issue that society has to face in the 21st century (Peters, 2016). With new technologies being created, the industries need to keep up with the growing pace of the technology world. These new artificial intelligence technologies may have the ability to eliminate many more jobs than we are able to create (Peters, 2016). “With technology advancing at a geometric pace, robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D-printing, and other innovations with enormous disruptive potential will soon hit the mainstream. Billions of people worldwide are currently employed in industries that will likely be affected- and billions of new entrants to the workforce will need jobs” (Peters, 2016, p. 25).

Artificial intelligence has greatly improved many factors in our everyday lives. From healthcare to education, and from poverty and security, artificial intelligence machines are doing very beneficial things that humans simply would never be able to do.

Artificial intelligence can benefit humans in ways we never thought possible. Today, with artificial intelligence we can place these machines in our place to solve our problems so we don’t have to. With the use of artificial intelligence machines we don’t need to type on our phones, we can just speak to it and it will type out our text or google search. In a world with artificial intelligence machines, which is in fact, happening right now, humans are communicating with these machines and in turn, are working less. Humans are most likely attracted to these types of machines that can do a chunk of the work for them because they are there to solve old and new problems for them. One very famous example of artificial intelligence is a robot. Robots that we have seen to date have done things from teaching Japanese students English, to conveying human-like emotion, like the Hanson-created Sophia robot (Daley, 2019).

This robot is more of a social robot that can understand conversations, make jokes, and form relationships with others (Daley, 2019). Artificial intelligence is also used in more advanced fields such as health care. There have been robot-assisted surgeries to the protection of patient files (Daley, 2019). The use of artificial intelligence machines in the health care sector is not only there to do the work of the surgeon, but can also assist in making sure patients records are secured to any breaches. With the help of these artificial machines, nurses have more time to help other patients, doctors have 17% more free time, and pharmaceutical companies are able to research life-saving medications in less time than ever before (Daley, 2019). This is a major milestone as health care and lives saving measures are also being brought to underdeveloped nations. Without the use of artificial intelligence, this wouldn’t have been possible.

While the creation of Artificial Intelligence was initially generated to make our lives easier, as much of technology is meant to do, there are still many individuals who believe that artificial intelligence is a threat to mankind. Some of the major businessmen who work in technology have voiced their opinions on artificial intelligence and to put it simply, these people believe that artificial intelligence will soon overpower humans. Elon Musk, a technology entrepreneur, and as many of us know him the founder of Tesla, has stated in a 2017 interview that humans are destined to be overpowered by Artificial Intelligence machines with such high levels of power (Sulleyman, 2017). Elon Musk is so worried about Artificial Intelligence taking over that he has urged many companies that are working on artificial intelligence to ‘slow down’ to make sure they don’t inadvertently build something unsafe (Strauss, 2017). Musk has become so motivated to ensure that artificial intelligence is created in a safe manner that he and other technology creators have founded an organization called ‘Open AI’.

The aim of this organization is to ensure that artificial intelligence is created to benefit all of humanity in a safe manner (OpenAI, n.d.). The goal of this organization is to create a positive, long-term impact of artificial intelligence because if done wrong artificial intelligence could damage society if it is built or used incorrectly (OpenAI, n.d.). The company’s dedication to researching the safe implementation of artificial intelligence shows just one of the ways in which artificial intelligence might be taking our freedom away from us in ways which we don’t even notice. Stephen Hawking, a famous theoretical physicist, has also warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence. According to the Independent (2015), Hawking’s states that these artificial intelligence machines could possibly end up killing us because they are much more clever than us (Griffin, 2015). Hawking states that the risk we have with artificial intelligence machines isn’t malice, but it is competence, he further explains that an artificial intelligence machine will be exceptionally good at accomplishing the goal it needs to get, but states that if the goals of that machine aren’t aligned with our, we’re in trouble (Griffin, 2015). Technically speaking, these machines are smarter than us humans, they are robots programmed to do what us humans can do plus more.

Artificial intelligence is unaware. One very important concern with respects to artificial intelligence is about the ethics and morals of it. Artificial intelligence can experience some very harmful outcomes while trying to achieve its end goal. For example, late in March 2018, the famous rideshare program launched a test of their self-driving vehicles in Tempe, Arizona, and while being on a public road, struck and killed a pedestrian (T.S, 2018). After that incidence occurred, internal documents revealed that Uber’s self-driving vehicles ran six red lights, which could have caused even more fatal events (T.S, 2018). Another major concern with artificial intelligence is autonomous weapon systems and whether or not it is ethically right to support theedevelopment of these (Russell, Hauert, Altman & Veloso, 2015). We are at a point in the technological era that these autonomous weapons can be created within years if desired (Russell, Hauert, Altman & Veloso, 2015).

The problem with the artificial intelligence of autonomous weapons is that they can simply get out of order, or hurt innocent people. The difference between these artificial intelligence mechanisms and actual humans is that they both differ greatly in what they are able to achieve. These artificial intelligence mechanisms may not have the perceptual and cognitive limitations that humans face. While a human can fully understand a scene and what is going on around them, these machines will not be able to understand to the capabilities of humans. So while these artificial intelligence machines are continuously being created, they need to be made in order to complement humans, not be a substitute for them.

Conclusion

Humans are ready for artificial intelligence to do the work for them. They may think this will solve all the problems we face in our daily lives. Artificial intelligence machines should be used as a complement to the work we are doing in our daily lives, not as a substitute to do the work for us. In a way, these machines are giving us more freedom as we can do more with the time we are saving, but at what cost? Artificial intelligence machines are only useful if they are created in a way that benefits all humans. We’ve looked at examples of the self-driving Uber vehicle that caused a human their life, or even the automation of harmful weapons that can harm the innocent.