Artificial Intelligence: Threat To Humans And Negative Effects

Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are not only growing exponentially but also making their way into industries and disrupting the workplace. Many fear that the rise of AI will lead to robots replacing human workers, and view this progression as a threat that could possibly wipe out entire industries.

The early stages of modern AI can be traced to endeavors to describe human thinking as a symbolic system. But the field of AI was formally founded in 1956 when the term ‘artificial intelligence’ was coined at a conference at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire. Over the years, giant tech businesses started leveraging Bots (intelligent agents) and Big Data to create assistants such as Facebook’s M, or Apple’s Siri. The goal is to develop software programs capable of acting as virtual assistants that may take the form of robots for physical help as well or facilitate business decisions.

Over the next few years, it is likely that AI will soon replace jobs involving monotonous or basic problem-solving tasks and extend beyond current human capability. What started as an attempt to transform human thinking as a symbolic system has soon turned out to be a threat to human employment.

Threat to Humans

Artificial intelligence advancements are occurring at an unprecedented rate. There are certain sectors that will be impacted significantly by the growing AI technology. E.g.,

1. With the introduction of fully autonomous cars, professional drivers (taxi, trucks and more) will see the demand for their skill set dropping rapidly.
2. Accountants and salespersons working on a significant amount of data processing and content handling in financial services, Insurance and any other sector stand at the risk of losing jobs.
3. With robots navigating the space to collect products and execute customer orders, workers in electronic commerce and fulfillment centers might stand to lose their jobs.
4. Increased Natural Language Processing (NLP) abilities for artificially intelligent apps, including (and especially for) chatbots and virtual assistants will take place of customer services.
5. Google released Google Home, a smart speaker that uses AI to act as an “artificially intelligent companion” to help users remember tasks, create appointments, and search for information by voice.

Penalization

The era of the virtual economy is marked with technologies substituting human senses and brains. In simpler words, intelligent machines with sophisticated are replacing workers. While this era is already spawning a new generation of billionaires, it comes with the risk of creating millions of people who are simply unable to contribute economically, and with greater damage to the suffering middle class. Taking away the job opportunities and replacing humans and the workforce with robots will create a society with a huge discrepancy in income – where the organizations grow richer and richer day by day, while the workforce is deprived of job opportunities. Also, the human aspect will be taken away from the jobs, e.g. robots providing customer service will be unable to provide human emotion to the job.

Tangible efforts must be taken by the Government to ensure humans are proffered over robots. The Governments should standardize a minimum percentage of the workforce that any organization using robots must have on board; and if any organization fails to maintain that rate, they must be penalized for the omission.

Negative Effects

Though AI has not completely replaced human intelligence yet, the legal, societal, political, and regulatory consequences are too big to ignore. It is necessary to be cognizant of these risks to be prepared to safely operate around them when the need arises.

• AI algorithms are built by humans, and hence are prone to human malice and biases. An AI programmed for something dangerous and with a built-in bias can prove to be a weapon of mass destruction.
• The AI takeover of jobs can widen social disparity and cause social chaos. According to a study by McKinsey Global Institute, by 2030, intelligent agents and robots could eliminate as much as 30 percent of the world’s human labour i.e. It will cause displacement between 400 and 800 million jobs by 2030, requiring as many as 375 million people to switch job categories entirely.
• With AI becoming involved in areas ranging from healthcare to finance to criminal justice, we are taking away the human judgment and human touch from these jobs. E.g. a father suffering from cancer wants to attend his daughter’s wedding and requests chemotherapy drug dosage to be manipulated in a way that he can make it to the wedding. This emotion can only be understood by a human clinician and not a robot.
• With every automation enhancement, we have seen unique and enhanced risks of acts such as phishing, delivery of viruses to software and taking advantage of AI systems to hack highly sensitive and critical information.

Government and Prevention

AI is here to stay. Governments can no longer bury their neck in the sand, refusing to acknowledge the growth of Artificial Intelligence and the risks it brings. The Governments can take a two-pronged approach to tackle the issue:

• Bring in legislative initiatives, regulations for minimum workforce, and give incentives to business owners to create jobs for the workforce; and
• Facilitate workforce transition and encourage people to learn new skills to meet the future labor needs based on AI.

There is a need for Subject Matter Experts and Industry leaders to come forth and discuss the need to achieve an intelligent balance between technology and human welfare.

• Train upcoming generations in new technologies, in order to ensure the presence of specialists equipped with dealing with AI
• Bring in legislation and social incentives for organizations to employ the workforce instead of robots.

Positivity

According to experts, humans and robots need to work together in order to have a productive future. Robots need to do jobs that can be automated, and humans need to do jobs that require a personal or creative touch. E.g. in a retail store, while robots can do all the lifting and shifting work, the store workers can take care of customer services and store aesthetics.

Summary

As emerging algorithm-encouraged artificial intelligence continues to thrive, the industry specialists are skeptical that it will threaten human autonomy, agency and capabilities. While some expect new jobs opportunities, others worry about large-scale job losses, widening economic divides and social upheavals. There is a strong need for industry leaders from across the world to come together to facilitate the innovation of widely accepted approaches aimed at leveraging the positives of growing technology while maintaining control over complex human-digital networks. Steps must be taken to build all-encompassing digital networks that help ensure that technology meets the social and ethical responsibilities of mankind. Some new level of regulatory and incentive programs will be necessary. The current workforce needs to be trained and retrained to achieve Artificial Intelligence coordination.

As more and more studies on artificial intelligence appear, it is evident that the benefits of a massively powerful tool like AI are undeniable. At the same time, these augmented capabilities come with a great deal of responsibility. As industry leaders plan out a rapidly changing and advancing world, the biggest task isn’t technological, but economic and political. It is paramount for us to find a middle way where AI technology and humans can coexist and flourish.