A new intelligence is destined to walk and talk with us in the distant future
Our fate from the time of existence was always to discover and unravel mysteries of nature through human shaped solutions that kept getting better at every stage from it’s inception till it’s implementation. The industrialization marked the dawn of extreme uncertainty of what the future may hold. The uncertainty only meant that the world would be extensively impacted with the positives of technological advancement. Besides, something new in the field of technology was always looked at as a sign of progress until their flaws started showing up. Nothing surprising as development of technology was analogous to the growth of the average thinking capacity of human minds based on the time period they lived in. By the 21st century, people started delving on the possibility that if someone else could actually think and work for us, the humans. ‘Making our lives easier one step at a time’ is the motto that drives this century. And surely that’s what prompted us to take the massive leap into the subject of developing a new intelligence — the artificial intelligence or commonly referred to as AI.
Almost inevitably , the transformations taking place on the planet are all nearing to a full on digitalized and automated community that lives and thrives because of technology. The pandemic was in fact a blessing in disguise for tech giants to turn the tide in their favor by heavily investing in their AI R&D to produce services and demands in line with customer requirements in the form of video conferencing applications, gaming, entertainment websites and social media platforms all in sync with personalized and curated customer content. Selecting and showing you information is just the tip of the ice-berg of what AI can do.
Google’s assistant, Apple’s assistant Siri etc. are all the notable ones known to the average smartphone user. Even kids get along with them at a tender age nowadays which is quite impressive when concerned about the sophistication of the intelligence that’s capable of communicating with children. But that puts kids at a greater risk of cutting them off from the real world where real people like you and I work by interacting in person. So, it is key to note that AIs similar to the human mind haven’t taken shape as of now. But the question, still remains, what happens if one day a fully functional AI powered community starts living, working and socially connects with humans? Should we be concerned?
Now for a little science class, currently, we have only developed Narrow and Reactive AIs. They are only limited to the range of functions they’re predetermined to perform. Did you think asking Alexa to book a flight ticket was the best task an AI could do? Well, AI’s have another form or type known as the super or self aware intelligence which works entirely on it’s own with the ability to think, act and react to a situation, just like us and sometimes, even more. Again, that remains a hypothesis for now. In short, we can’t expect an AI community among us in the next 10 years to exactly walk and talk like us. But wait, don’t stop reading yet. We can always speculate and imagine what the future would look like. That’s right, imagination and innovation is our forte for now.
Renowned author Dan Brown had a very interesting and fascinating theory in his book ‘Origin’ where the future would include a new group of species known as ‘Technium’ in light of what may’ve been our actions that lead them into our own world. A world where we aren’t the only intelligent beings to socialize with. Interesting isn’t it? Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corporation are keen on placing chips in our brains so that our brain works in tandem with an AI for better productivity. I mean, all these vivid concepts may seem bizarre and out of the blue at first, especially when AI already has spurred the negative effects to be more concerned about. Hazards are bound to be expected . Hurdles are to be tackled and problems must be solved at every step to make sure that we model a world where AI is as reliable as a friend.
“Hey Alexa, have you done the dishes ?” — not so soon, but we’ll get there.