There is so much talk about Artificial Intelligence and Natural Intelligence but can anybody answer this challenging question?
When should people use Natural Intelligence and when should they use Artificial intelligence? Can anybody decide correctly which one to use and when?
If we do not have the answer to this question, we will mess up with both Natural Intelligence and Artificial intelligence and land in problems as well.
When we do routine work use AI. When we make judgments about people or human assessment, we use Natural Intelligence.
Earlier people used to read books and look at the dictionary for the meaning or to understand any concept or a thing. The new generation prefers AI over Natural Intelligence in many situations. They rely on AI rather than using their natural intelligence to find a solution. Even while coding and solving large problems, people use Chat GPT or other software for effortless solutions. Over a while, the mind will stop taking intelligent signals and people will become dumb.
Also read: Building a Culture of Psychological Safety will be Key -Rubi Khan
No matter how mature the machine intelligence becomes it will always be better to keep decision-making about human careers with humans because :
- Decisions taken by the machine are not transparent, we can’t decode the algorithm.
- The same goes for being accountable, we can make humans answerable. Wrong decision but not a machine.
Recently there was a case when a woman employee filed a sexual harassment case against a Robot.
- AI decisions can also amplify biases on D&I in a wrong manner in selection etc.
- Topics like personal data privacy and consent will become an issue if we blindly rely on AI to take decisions.
The sparring over ‘Artificial’ and ‘Natural’ in the context of Intelligence brings to mind the heady years of the 1800s – 1900s when the Western world gave us the timeless classics of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde or the horrors of Frankenstein or the farcical Dracula!!!!! Better still shall we remember the storm around the Y2k problem !!! Now we fret over AI….
Intelligence is the ability to acquire knowledge and apply to upgrade or function one’s skill. This ability is most pronounced in humans. It is also there in varying degrees in various animal species.
When one creates a machine that will have this somewhat ability to acquire knowledge and apply to the skill set of that machine, that in the strict sense is Artificial Intelligence!!
So the question of when to use ‘Artificial’ Intelligence and when to use ‘Natural’ intelligence gives an impression as if you as a human have two sets of Intelligence!! One Naturally ordained and one artificially acquired!! This is not correct as it assumes some finiteness to intelligence but intelligence cannot be bound as it is an ability which in many ways as ‘skill’ develops as we acquire more knowledge!! Please note the use of the word ‘Knowledge’ in context rather than ‘Information’!!
Of course there are horrors of machines becoming intelligent. This has been the subject of many fantasies, with Arthur C Clark’s foundation series which explored errant and criminal-minded Robots, it gave us the five invaluable rules of being a Robot!! That also showed us how intelligence can triumph over the seemingly iron-clad laws of processed information!! The dangers of ‘AI’ are aptly highlighted and brought on the silver screen in the memorable movie ‘IRobot’. Then of course there were the Terminator series.
Robin Williams did take a more nuanced look at the subject portraying himself as a Robot and questioning the thinning boundaries. In the timeless movie ‘Her’ the horrors of ‘AI’ going rogue was very aptly projected.
Having said all of the above ‘AI’ is the present way forward in the highly information-based digitally connected world. The Digital world as we know is undergoing a major transformation. This is being driven by ‘AI’. The jobs on which the third world countries supplied cheap digital labour to the first world and raked in the moolah to make great establishments such as ‘Infosys’ is now vanishing to ‘AI’. That is the biggest threat and hidden in this threat is a great opportunity!! That opportunity is the opening of thousands of AI-related jobs. Thus we are now on the cusp of the fifth Industrial revolution!!
The ones where AI will become household names the phones, vacuums, washing machines, intelligent gas stoves, microwaves, household maids, internet browsing, etc all would get dominated by AI. The takeover will be of the myriad of everyday machines than of exotic superrobots
We have to gear up and embrace the change lest we are left out in the cold at the time of such transformation.
Charles Dickens said ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….we live in interesting times.’
We live in interesting times indeed.
The future is full of surprises, uncertainties, anxiety, and excitement as well.
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