In the winter of 2014, my uncle forwarded me a video of him sitting in a Tesla Model S reading a magazine as the car drives itself on a dark road at a speed of about 50 MPH. I can see the car changing lanes and adjusting its speed so as not to crash into the car in front of it. All this while, my uncle continues (to pretend) reading his magazine. I know he is not, because the magazine is upside down. His one eye is still on the road and he is nervous but he is in no way involved in driving the car. It was driving itself. I remember my reaction to the video. I believe I said, ‘Wow, thats cool’. But I did not dwell on it further. Cool gimmicks of expensive toys. Fast forward three years. I am sitting in my office looking at a company wide demo for robotic process automation, or RPA. I see how a computer program fills out around a hundred data entry forms automatically, after reading relevant data from a hundred hand written forms scanned into the program. An activity which took a person around 90 hours to do was done by the machine in 9, without any errors. Even if there was an error, the next time it was certain that the error would not be repeated. This time, I didn’t say, ‘Wow, that’s cool’. This time I started looking for online courses to learn more about similar technologies. My heart rate was slightly elevated and I felt that my resume needed to be strengthened. This time, I felt a slight churn in the bottom of my stomach. The machines are coming.
Artificial intelligence is a system’s ( a machine’s) ability to correctly interpret external data and/or information, use it and learn from it in order to achieve its goals. This is the simplest definition. Intelligence is a feature we associate with animals (including humans). Artificial intelligence is when a machine demonstrates this animal capability.
We cannot be sure when the term came into being. It was definitely popularised by science fiction stories in which robots or automatons of some kind develop human like intelligence and demonstrate the ability to feel and emote. The term has been demonised and glorified in equal measure, however, the demonization generally tends to stick with us. How many AI centric science fiction movies do you remember where the robots are NOT trying to kill the humans ?
We are nowhere near that stage though. Our best AI programs are either limited to accomplishing tasks in a narrow field, like driving cars or trucks and controlling airplanes or they are analytical AIs which learn from past experience and predict outcomes which are affected by a limited range of parameters. But this doesn’t mean that there is no need to be alarmed. Here is one story which should give you a fair idea of how fast things are progressing.
StockFish 8 is a chess playing computer program which has years of practice defeating chess players, nay, champions from all over the world. It was trained in a multitude of chess strategies by the best computer programmers in the world. It has consistently been ranked as the most powerful chess computer program in the world. Based on the the hardware available to it, it can scale up or scale down its level. Now let’s introduce our protagonist (antagonist?) Enter, AlphaZero. An algorithm which is self trained (played only against itself). It’s a neural network based algorithm which was able to train itself in 4 hours, to surpass the levels of StockFish 8. In a 100 match competition with StockFish 8, AlphaZero won 28 games, drew the remaining 72. Add up the numbers. Its 100 games. No losses. 4 hours. It took 4 hours to beat the best chess playing computer in the world, without any human help whatsoever. Did a tingle just run down your spine?
Sensationalism always sells. It’s more popular than hope. Which is why, for many people outside the scientific community, AI is, either a threat which needs to be taken care of immediately, or its still in its infancy and poses absolutely no threat. Both the viewpoints are wrong. AI hold promise too. It is being used to revolutionary effects in the medical field in helping decode the genome, identifying genes which cause life threatening diseases and even predicting the next flu outbreak helping scientists and medical professionals prepare. AI hold promise in so many other fields. It is already being used as a fraud prevention tool in the finance and banking sectors. AI can one day replace mundane jobs like bank tellers, supermarket cashiers and bus conductors. Introduced within robots, AI can replace other mundane jobs like janitors and cleaners. Such robots may one day perform dangerous tasks like bomb defusal and working with radioactive wastes and putting out dangerous forest fires. AI has the potential to revolutionize farming. Even in the area of arts, AI has shown promise, both as an artist (AI generated paintings and AI created songs) and as a tool (detecting fraudulent paintings)
But while the promise paints a future perfect picture, there is an ugly side of AI as well. Surprisingly, it’s not the AI’s fault. Just like any machine we humans have built, AI serves our purposes. For example, an AI which detects fraudulent transactions for a bank, does so to increase the bank’s profits by reducing costs. Similarly, robots which automate a factory floor, don’t do so on their own volition. They do not think that this will reduce human injury. They do so, because a human made the decision to set them up in order to increase his or his company’s profit, by cutting down on costs. Let’s consider a scenario. If tomorrow, Amazon or Google come out with a machine which can replace the human cashier in supermarkets, for a one time investment of 100,000, but will enable the stores to remain open 24*7, throughout the year, will not ask for health or dental benefits and will never take a day off, all retail companies will clamour to get their hands on it. Overnight, the world’s cashiers will be out of jobs! It crueler than it sounds. Why? Because we, the middle class, will not be immediately impacted. We might be glad that the stores now remain open 24 hours and we don’t have to make small talk with the person on the cash register. Now imagine an AI which can do better business analysis then you. Imagine an AI which can code better than you. Imagine an AI which can read spreadsheets better than you. Imagine an AI, which can do you job better than you. You get the picture. Chances are that such an AI is already being developed by someone.
So how can we get the most benefit out of AI? The answer is simple. By focusing our attention on the ‘WE’ in this question. How can ‘WE’ …. We have to expand our circle of inclusion. We have to look beyond ourselves, look beyond our family, our community, our city, our country and consider the humanity as a whole. Can we let the machines take over our mundane jobs while we make sure that the people these machines replace can come out of their poverty traps ? Can we make sure that people in third world countries are able to access AI doctors which prescribe them the right medicines for free, without letting actual doctors feel worthless? Can we build cars in a person-less factory while making sure people are still going to be able to afford them ?
WE have to tell our government’s to focus on such questions. WE have to make our business leaders and entrepreneurs think about such questions. We have to think about such questions every day. Before we worry about AI making humanity extinct, we have to worry about AI making humanity irrelevant. And WE have to do it fast. Because it took a machine 4 hours to be the best at chess …. the best ever. It may take just a few more for the machine to be best at everything and make us all irrelevant.
Finding the Method in the Madness 