Topic of the day: Artificial Intelligence
There is a hype of artificial intelligence everywhere, but what is it really? How can we think about intelligence, if it is not coming from us humans who invented this term?
Well, first we need to understand what intelligence means. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, intelligence is defined as “the ability to learn, understand, and make judgements or have opinions that are based on reason”. The Oxford Dictionary has a similar definition: “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills”. Both definitions involve understanding something and making decisions based on that.
When we refer to artificial intelligence, we are mainly talking about machines (including robots and computers) that can understand a process and make decisions without human influence, and from that comes the artificial side of it.
I can give you some examples based on my experience in the industrial sector. Think about a machine that could select apples in a packaging line and discard the ones damaged or with imperfections. The machine should have sensors for detecting colour, skin smoothness, among other characteristics that we would do using our eyes and hands and make the decision based on that. But simple automation could perhaps do this selection, and the intelligence would lay on further decision processes that a human would typically make, such as: how many apples are being discarded, which are the main problems with them, are the apples being damaged when being processed by the machine, and so on. Therefore, the intelligent machine would not only select the best apples but also have a feedback loop in order to improve the process. I wrote an article about machine learning and actually, artificial intelligence is closely linked to it.
Let me give another example: the operation of a locomotive is typically made by trained operators. They have to decide when to accelerate, when to stop, communicate with the control room if everything is running well and signalize when there is a problem. They should also prevent accidents by various means, including horning, stopping at passages, or even try to avoid an accident if they are crossing an urban area. All these operations are made based on instructions and on own decisions made by the operator, for example when stopping the convoy if an irresponsible car driver crosses a passage. If artificial intelligence is applied for the locomotive to be self-operated, the machine should use all this knowledge including instructions and risk detection in order to operate it safely. The locomotive should then be upgraded with sensors to detect similar risks as a human operator would do.
Of course, in both situations above we should also evaluate how much risk the apple processing plant or the railway owner would like to take when they implement such intelligent machines in their daily business. Many would be more careful before trusting a machine to do something for them, but the truth is that for many repetitive tasks, a machine is much more reliable than a human. It is a sad story for many workers in the future that might have their professions replaced by modern and intelligent machines.
Ethics is also a very important subject to be considered for the application of artificial intelligence in medicine, for example. Should we let a robot doctor decide which patient should it save if, for example a pregnant mom has trouble during the birth? Or would we trust a robot nurse to tell us which medicine should we take?
Another important point is security on these artificially intelligent devices. How much would we trust the machine, knowing that someone wrote the code that made it “intelligent”. Could someone breach the code and change something making it harmful? Or even worse: could these intelligent things change our habits and behaviours influencing our opinions without us being aware of that? If you think this is a utopia, just see how much we are dependent on IT companies such as Google and Apple. Many of these questions are explored in a very good book I read recently: 21 lessons for the 21 century, written by Yuval Noah Harari, a highly recommended read if you like the topic.
There are many more ways that artificial intelligence could change the future landscape both by replacing humans in common tasks, or influencing our decisions regarding, music, arts, politics, food, travelling, and much more. The best approach to handle all the changes that are coming is to understand and be aware of yourself and your daily behaviours. Especially questioning the status quo, and if possible being part of the transformation, instead of only being influenced by it.
