Alexia Tawes

Writing for the Sciences

English 21003

Science Controversy

10/25/2020

Is AI worth it or not ?

Technology is always changings and upgrading. The mass say that technology, mainly Artificial Intelligence (AI),  will replace healthcare and its providers, including nurses and physicians.  Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, unlike the natural intelligence displayed by humans and animals Artificial intelligence (Artificial intelligence 2020) . They figure technology will take the place of many more jobs than it creates and at a much faster pace than in previous centuries. “Jobs will be lost at a greater pace than ever before, a rate that might pass the threshold of our ability as a nation to provide a reasonable level of employment and livable wage for all persons.” (Brigette Hyacinth, 2020) Businesses are looking for every method to reduce cost and/or human error so they can maintain a competitive edge in the global marketplace. Also, the Global Marketplace is a competition and they will do what they have to, to survive. Outsource or automate, whatever will reduce costs and eliminate human error. The idea is great but it does pose some issues.

Artificial Intelligence sounds like a great idea until you analyze it deeply.

“The traditional problems (or goals) of AI research include reasoning, knowledge representation, learning, perception and the ability to move and manipulate objects. (Artificial intelligence 2020).”

Artificial Intelligence reasoning ability is nearly non existent. Everyday questions, such as “What should I make for dinner?”,  require relational reasoning, an important component of higher thought that has been tough for artificial intelligence (AI) to grasp. Researchers at Google’s DeepMind developed a simple algorithm to handle  reasoning, which has already beaten humans ability to comprehend. The problem is that humans are 100% successful at relational reasoning and using logic to come up with quick solutions, solving complex problems, recognizing sequences and comparing and contrasting. AI is not advanced enough to perform those complex tasks off the whim. Instead, AI’s ability to reach such capacity is slow. AI can reason using predetermined rules but not on a whim (Matthew HutsonJun. 14 et al., 2017).

Knowledge representation ties into reasoning. The only knowledge that is present in  AI is the knowledge that is stored. This also ties into learning. We all know that we learn things everyday. When humans can adapt naturally, AI cannot. They have to be programmed to do what they do. Perception wise, AI does operate the way humans do. They cannot regard, understand or interpret things the way we do because they are machines that are programmed meaning they cannot use senses to make swift decisions or act on their own.

AI’s ability to move and manipulate objects is not as precise as a human ability which leads to additional problems, which could have been avoided if we had used humans.

Discussing Artificial Intelligence is important because it is necessary to keep up with science and how it is changing and adapting. It is important to know where our future lies and how technology will make or break us. The amount of data that is generated daily, by both humans and machines, far out does any human  ability to analyse, interpret, and make complex decisions based on that data. Artificial intelligence forms the basis for all computer learning and is the future of all complex decision making.  Computers are complex enough to  calculate combinations and permutations to arrive at the best decision. With some improvements, AI can be  the foundational future of business decision making (NetApp, What Is Artificial Intelligence or AI and why is it Important 1970).

There have been various approaches of including AI into the everyday world.

Financial services industry uses artificial intelligence to understand creditworthiness.

Call centers use VCA (Virtual Customer Assistance ), which is a form of AI,  to respond to customer inquiries outside of human interaction. A lot of times when you use a customer service chat, you get an automated response first. When a person initiates dialog on a webpage via chat (chatbot), the person is often interacting with a computer specialized AI. If the chatbot can’t interpret or address the question, a human intervenes to communicate directly with the person. Higher-level inquiries that AI cannot take care of  are redirected to a human.  These noninterpretive instances are fed into a machine-learning computation system to improve the AI application for future interactions (NetApp, What Is Artificial Intelligence or AI and why is it Important 1970). Other ways which we use AI include opening your phone with your finger or face ID. A Lot of people don’t know that when you log onto social media, AI is working behind the scenes to personalize what you see on your feed using a specific algorithm. It uses past history to see what you would prefer to see on your timeline. Another way in which we utilize AI daily is through Siri, Alexa and the smart home devices that we have.

In my opinion, Instead of trying to make AI the future, completely, we should continue using it where it is already being used and build on it to make it more efficient in certain fields. We should also integrate into healthcare. AI can give physicians or healthcare professionals a boost by incorporating better decision-making tools. This way they will be able to see more patients and come to decisions faster. Artificial Intelligence can integrate with the human element of the healthcare service rendered, and not replace it altogether. These developments will allow doctors to focus more on the human aspects of patient care, such as empathy instead of the only science aspect. AI should also be developed so that it provides more jobs. There will always be a need for skilled human labor and expertise when we deal with machines. Robots will have glitches, need updates, servicing and may require new parts if an existing part goes bad. As we rely more and more on industrialized systems and automation, we will require more people with technical skills to maintain, replace, update and fix these systems and hardware, such as engineers.

What could happen if this controversy went uninvestigated? If AI went uninvestigated, AI could result in a loss of jobs. So something that should have helped the economy by creating more jobs, will do the opposite, resulting in negative impacts of the economy and a strain on the government.

“Autonomous weapons are artificial intelligence systems that are programmed to kill. In the hands of the wrong person, these weapons could easily cause mass casualties (Rohde et al., 2018).”

“The AI is programmed to do something beneficial, but it develops a destructive method for achieving its goal (Rohde et al., 2018) .”

As these examples illustrate, the concern about advanced AI isn’t malevolence but competence. A super intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we have a problem.

As humans, we go the safest route to achieve our goals. Unfortunately, because AI’s are programmed, they do not have the ability to decipher between a safe or a problematic way of achieving a goal. They achieve the goal regardless of the problems it might cause. As humans, we go the safest route to achieve our goals.

Other problems AI might cost are bias. If AI algorithms are built with a bias, they will produce results that are biased. We will have a shift in human experience because AI will take over tasks that will reduce human interaction. .

In Conclusion, AI-complete problems are hypothesised to include general computer vision, natural language understanding, and dealing with unexpected circumstances while solving any real-world problem. AI cannot take over, but it can be combined with the human experience to create a better world.

References

Artificial intelligence. (2020, October 20). Retrieved October 20, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence

Matthew HutsonJun. 14, 2., Lindzi Wessel, R., Pratik PawarOct. 20, 2., Scott Waldman, E., Rebekah Tuchscherer, R., Jeffrey BrainardOct. 20, 2., . . . Jocelyn KaiserSep. 21, 2. (2017, December 08). Computers are starting to reason like humans. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/computers-are-starting-reason-humans

NetApp. (1970, January 01). What Is Artificial Intelligence or AI and why is it Important. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from https://www.netapp.com/artificial-intelligence/what-is-artificial-intelligence/

Rohde, K., Vukovic, R., Zeldich, M., Ramesh, S., Hershkowitz, J., & Farkas, G. (2018, June 13). Benefits & Risks of Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved October 29, 2020, from https://futureoflife.org/background/benefits-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/?cn-reloaded=1