Future of AI
As AI gained prominence, there is both hope and fear on how it will shape the future of human kind. Government agencies, politicians in many countries are concerned on how it will shape the future - both near term and long term.
 
Some countries with relatively small economy and great technological base have taken some bold steps in AI initiatives and implementations.
 
Skepticism of AI
  • AI will perform too many human activities and gain upperhand over humans.
  • Joblessness can cause suffering, loss of income. Literally most human jobs can be performed at a very high efficiency by humanoid AI embedded robots. The robots have no fatigue.
    • Well known concept - Theory of use and disuse :
    • Due to too much work done by robots and AI based machines, basic human memory retention faculty is lost. Simple example in current day is - mobile phones with address books made people relay on phones and not human memory. Calls can be dialed by even human voice commands - no more dialing using fingers.
    • The GPS systems provide very accurate address and AI technologies and algorithms enable them to operate so efficiently. This has resulted in humans losing the concept and sense of direction and totally relay on the GPS device or mobile phone with GPS, for navigation. Again using voice commands directions can be enabled in phones and mobile devices.
    • Driverless vehicles will result in humans forgetting how to drive and relay totally on autonomous vehicles. This also results in diminishing of driver jobs as it exists today.
  • Use of LLM to commit fraud in various forms
  • Use of Hallucination for creating false or biased results
  • Use of LLM to create art and TV entertainment content created a scare and resulted in strike to prevent use of AI for content creation.

Hope of AI
  • AI based systems will solve and augment majority of the human activities. AI will prevent or minimize failures in activities by self and autonomous corrections.
  • AI based systems will perform 24x7x365 without fatigue
  • AI can help in space exploration with and without humans, at better speed
  • AI can help in drug research and create new drugs in record times.
  • AI enabled robots can assist doctors in surgery or even perform autonomous surgery. These robots could be embedded with 3D-scanning and enhanced image recognition to perform such activities at ease.
  • AI based robots could operate in pendamic and hazardous situations and keep doctors/medical staff at a safe distance.
  • AI based robots could operate in military - bomb disposal, dangerous terrains, hazardous conditions and avoid or minimize human casualities.
  • AI based devices can be used in weather prediction, and can operate in all types of situations that is considered dangerous for humans.
  • AI based devices can be used in air traffic control, and can operate without fatigue.
 
AI and Role of Humans
There are several reasons that humans will still have a upperhand over robots and AI enabled machines. A simple example would be, in systems where AI algorithms are used to compute future values of (n + 1) years. The future values are computed using nth year plus one year using a specific set of algorithms and historic/training data. If the computation process were converted to (n + x) years, with x being automatically generated, creating - total automation (zero human intervention), distortion or exponential decay could easily occur. This becomes similar to autonomous or runaway hallucination.
 
ERP Systems
ERP Systems are known for end-to-end automatation of business processes. I was automating calendar creation in an autonomous way - robotizing the process. The calendar gets created year after year using existing data and embedding date computation based on host date. For weekly data analysis companies use 364 day calendar (52 X 7 = 364), known as Fiscal Calendar, with begining day of the year being any fixed day (Sunday, Monday, etc.). Using starting date and adding 364 days results in a loss of a day each year. The calendar drifts backward by one day every year. To correct the drift, an extra week is added once in every 7 or 8 years. This also can be implemented in the computation. The accounting/controllers of the company said, they may manually correct the extra week factor based on several factors and market conditions. They said the additional week can be any value between 5 to 8 years. Thus the code had to be adjusted to create three years of calendar data and make manual adjustments per management recommendation, keeping humans in control.
 
Industrial Robots
In the world of robotics, unmanaged or unmonitored robots operating using complex AI algorithms can reach a state of singularity - autonomously computed values would mathematically reach infinity, or result in infinite looped processes or memory overload. Behind the scenes, high level math, vector arithmetic, AI algorithms and other hardware/software systems operate the robot. When any one of the internal processes stop or gets hung, the robot goes offline, which needs to be reset or restarted by human intervention. The only autonomous solution would be implemented is to exclude/skip that robot in a manufacturing assembly line and shut if off. It is brought back on-line by human intervention.
 
Auto Pilot - In Aeroplanes
Aeroplanes have had auto-pilot mode for many many years. Even though they work almost perfectly, human intervention is necessary when required. When certain situations occur, in terms of improper gauge readings or loss of control, immediately auto-pilot is disabled and manual controls are taken over. In fact people would not like to fly or have confidence in a pilotless plane.
 
Self Driving - Autonomous Vehicles
In automobiles some companies are trying total humanless taxis (robotic taxis) etc. If a taxi were to fail due to tire blow-out or other issue, the customer may have to call the company to send a new taxi. If it gets involved in an accident, it is another issue. Still some form of human intervention is required.
 
High speed trains although are autonomous, do have an operator who monitors the various systems time to time. This is mandatory in countries where temperature can drop significantly in winter, tracks succeptible to lanslides, avalanche, getting frozen, loss of power in automated signals etc. Humans and machines work together in these situations.
 
The use of AI in the future is endless. There can be many more areas where human kind can benefit from AI and co-exist with systems with AI.


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Revised Date: April 16th, 2024