Introduction to AI & Potential Applications

The birth of Artificial Intelligence in the year 1955 has proven 38 out of 52 mathematical theories with the creation of the “Logic Theorist”. This is a continuously growing technology that has a massive impact on how the users interact and are affected by the internet. Data collection and analysis is ramping up significantly due to the IoT connectivity, increase in connected devices and the ever-speedier processing of computers.

Some of the sectors have started their AI journey and others are constantly evolving having a long way to go. However, AI’s impact on the common person’s life very hard to ignore.

 

AI applications on different sectors:

Transportation: The evolving autonomous car will one day ferry us from place to place.

Manufacturing: A limited range of tasks like assembly and stacking is assigned to AI robots to work along with humans.

Healthcare: AI helps to diagnose diseases more quickly and accurately, streamlined and raced drug discovery, virtual nursing assistants to monitor patients and to collect, analyze their data to create a tailored experience. This mainly focuses on treating the senior citizens to live a fuller and healthier life.

Education: Digital textbooks, facial analysis to determine the emotions of the students (e.g. Who’s bored or struggling) and fitting into their individual needs is done with the help of AI.

Media: AI helps Journalism in making very quick sense of very complex financial reports.

Customer Service: Last but least, AI assistant which will place human-like calls to book appointments at, your required service vendor. Words, context and the voice tone will also be recognized by the AI assistant.

These advances and numerous others are still only in the budding stage; there is much more to come – no one still can really predict the depth of this technology. Day by day AI is augmenting and has made the work of the common man more efficient and effective.

However, experts predict a wide-range of possibilities of a future with AI. Computers matching or even exceeding the human intelligence and competences (e.g. speech recognition, complex decision-making, reasoning and learning). The word “smart” is often used in describing this in every aspect and field that this application is in. Predictions re done that this process will save money, lives and offer humans to enjoy a more tailored future.

Regardless of the optimistic view point on AI, most of the experts have express their concerns about the long-term evolutional impact of it on the essential services of human beings. The concerns and suggestions towards solutions have been expressed by many experts.

Future with AI

Concerns with the progression of AI:

Human agency: With the new WhatsApp privacy update the experience of loss of control of data and our lives were the talk of the town. People tend not to learn the context about these tools and how they operate. Sacrificing their independence, privacy and power is done by choice hence they have no control over these processes.

Job loss: Efficiency and effectiveness of these code driven systems will disturb the human workload causing a widening of economic divides. Between expecting new jobs to emerge and worrying the loss of their jobs will lead to social upheaval.

Data abuse: Companies striving for profits and governments ruthless for power have the authority over these AI tools. Ethical violations are often experienced and these globally networked systems aren’t easy to regulate.

Dependence lock-in: Augmenting AIdeepens the human’s dependency on machine-driven systems and will drive away the ability or them to think for themselves. Taking actions independently without automated systems and interacting effectively with others will erode. The social and survival skill of the humans will diminish.

Suggested solutions by the experts for the survival of humans:

Values-based system: Introducing and developing a new level of certification process and regulatory will be necessaryto make sure that the technology will meet the social and ethical responsibilities.

Prioritize people: Working toward expanding human and AI collaborations to find a middle ground for human relevance and the programmed intelligence. Hence reorganizing and altering economic and political systems to help humans to heighten their capacities and capabilities.

The future of the world with AI would be much effective and efficient only if the companies having authority would cease to think about their gain but about the prevalence of the mankind. Using this technology to assist humans and not to replace them would make a much more difference going forward with this vastly evolving technology. Looking forward to a ‘smart’ future. – Written by Bhashini Alwis.