Saud 1

Sean Saud

Professor Heather Johnson-Taylor

English 1201

24 July 2019

Benefits of Artificial Intelligence

The idea of Artificial Intelligence has always interested me ever since I have heard of it,

but my interest in AI sparked my senior year of high school when I was reading Neuromancer

for my Science Fiction class. It is one of my favorite books, even though it was so difficult to

understand that I had to read it twice. The plot revolves around two halves of an AI system

everything they can to merge back to one with the help of a “console cowboy”. The AI’s were

able to create extremely intricate plans to make all of this happen. The fact that this book was so

hard to understand only made me love it more. The AI in the book was exponentially more

sophisticated than the human mind, and the idea of that is terrifying. I am a computer science

major and I plan on focusing my career on Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is so

important to me because of its potential to bring about revolutionary changes for humanity, good

or bad. There is so much confusion around Artificial Intelligence and its effects that needs

clarification if we want to make sure that the outcomes are positive.

One definition of AI states: “Artificial Intelligence is a field of science and engineering

concerned with the computational understanding of what is commonly called intelligent

behavior, and with the creation of artifacts that exhibit such behavior” (Shapiro 1). Artificial

Intelligence is not just about robots, but also about understanding intelligent thought and action

using computers (Buchanan 54). AI is able to learn in a way that AI experts call deep learning.
 Saud 2

Essentially, AI learns exactly like a toddler; by the assimilation and the processing of internal

and external stimuli and their interactions. But when AI learns how to perform a task, it explores

every possibility to complete it until it finds a better way, and often the best way to complete it.

It can take time for AI to learn a skill, but when it has learned it, it is believed to completely

master the skill in every way. Artificial Intelligence has beaten the best poker player in the

world, the best chess player in the world, the greatest “Go” player in the world, and eventually, it

will certainly be able to beat us in anything else.

AI researchers that create and program Artificial Intelligence have three goals:

Computational Psychology, Computational Philosophy, and Advanced Computer Science. The

goal of Computational Psychology is to fully understand intelligent human behavior by creating

programs that behave the same way as people (Shapiro 1). The goal of Computational

Philosophy is to computationally understand intelligent human behavior without being restricted

by the way the human mind works (Shapiro 2). The goal of Advanced Computer Science is to

extend our knowledge on how to program on computers, especially to program tasks that humans

can do but not program yet (Shapiro 1).

For the longest time, Artificial Intelligence had been a fantasy largely for philosophers

and writers. Many philosophers and writers have toyed with the idea of intelligent machines as a

literary device to help define what it means to be human. The idea of Artificial Intelligence can

be traced back to Homer around 850 BCE, who wrote about mechanical tripods waiting on the

gods at dinner (Buchanan 53). In the seventeenth century, mechanical animals and dolls were

able to display human-like behaviors. They were made from clockwork mechanisms, so they

were obviously limited in their abilities. Although the mechanical animals and dolls did not

contain Artificial Intelligence, they introduced humanity to a mechanistic view of behavior. In

 Saud 3

the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, chess-playing machines were developed (Buchanan 54).

They were viewed as being so smart, that some people believed the machines were playing chess

autonomously. Electronics and computers were invented in the twentieth century. Although the

public perceives electronics and robots to be intelligent computers, early robotics were focused

on mechanical engineering and not really with intelligence. The robots were task-oriented

typically in manufacturing plants and incapable of any thinking. In AI's formative years, it was

influenced by engineers, biologists, experimental psychology, communication theory, game

theory, mathematics and statistics, logic and philosophy, and linguistics. These perspectives from

a variety of disciplines allowed Artificial Intelligence to grow into what it is today. For example,

Norbert Weiner’s work in engineering in cybernetics introduced feedback and control into

Artificial Intelligence, while the work of Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, and Carl Hemple

introduced logic principles into Artificial Intelligence. In 1950, Alan Turing released a paper

that made the idea of AI much clearer, and it also included the famous Turing’s Test. The

Turing’s Test is a test where a subject is asked questions by a human in order to determine if it

can think (Buchanan 56). In the movie Bladerunner, the Turing’s Test is used to distinguish

humans from robots. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were many programs developed that could

solve problems only intelligent people were able to solve. Allen Newell, J. Clifford Shaw, and

Herb Simon created a program that could create proofs of logic theorems. Their program was

demonstrated at a Dartmouth conference in 1956, where the term "Artificial Intelligence" was

coined (Buchanan 57). Through the 1960s to 2000s, a plethora of AI demonstrations showed AI

becoming better and better. We now have Artificial Intelligence everywhere. We carry Artificial

Intelligence in our pocket (Siri). We come home and ask Alexa what the weather will be like

tomorrow. Artificial Intelligence guesses what words we were trying to type when we made an
 Saud 4

error typing. Artificial Intelligence is probably even going to be used on this paper to scan for

plagiarism.

There appears to be no limit to how AI can help us, and many scholars argue that there is

absolutely no limit. Artificial Intelligence is a revolutionary technology that will be much more

beneficial than detrimental to humanity. AI improves our health, safety while driving,

businesses, and almost everything that requires data analysis.

Self-autonomous cars make

driving much safer. Artificial

Intelligence is capable of being aware of

many more things at the same time than

a human being. Sensors on AI are able

to detect objects over two hundred yards

away based on size, shape, and

movement patterns (“The Future of

Driving”). There are a few cases of

accidents and deaths from self-driving

vehicles, but there are much more

accidents from driver-operated cars.

Nearly 125 million people die every

year worldwide in automobile accidents.

Autonomous cars would also decrease

Figure 1. Benefits of Driverless Vehicles
traffic congestion that arises from the

stop-and-go nature of human drivers, not to mention the decreases in traffic from the reduction in
 Saud 5

automobile accidents. With a decrease in traffic, people will be able to travel places much faster

and not waste any gas idling while starting and stopping during heavy traffic on the highway. AI

can also identify how to drive with the maximum fuel efficiency, saving money and reducing

carbon dioxide emissions (which is key in addressing climate change). Self-autonomous cars will

be more accurate, allowing lanes to be thinner and allowing more traffic to pass. Parking spaces

will also be smaller, allowing more cars to park in a certain lot. People with self-autonomous

vehicles would be dropped off at their destination and then the car would park itself. Without the

need for space in between cars for the passengers to get out, more cars will be able to park in the

same area. Self-autonomous cars will also greatly reduce the costs of taxis, Ubers, and other

similar driving services because they will not have to pay the driver and would get better gas

(“The Future of Driving”).

Artificial Intelligence has demonstrated its abilities to improve healthcare. Having AI

scan the patient's genetic code allows doctors to give personalized treatment. Patients will get the

right medicine at the right dose, without the dangers of experimenting from one pill to the next.

Scanning the patient’s genetic code also allows AI to diagnose diseases much more accurately

than even the best doctors. AI is also able to diagnose diseases much faster, which can save lives

for people with certain diseases. Artificial Intelligence can read x-rays, CAT scans, PET scans,

and every other type of visuals used to diagnose things, in literally milliseconds. Not only does it

read the visuals in a millisecond, but it also compares it to a database of millions of other similar

visuals. In one study, Artificial Intelligence was able to identify breast cancer at a higher rate

than eleven pathologists. Artificial Intelligence is also able to detect cancer much earlier than any

doctor. Artificial Intelligence is also used to develop and identify new medicines to treat

diseases. The “Da Vinci Robot” is a robot with Artificial Intelligence that assists doctors in
 Saud 6

performing surgeries. Doctors maneuver hands of the robot to perform the surgeries, eliminating

any possible errors from a hand tremble. Moreover, every time the robot assists in surgery, it

remembers the movements made, making the robot better and better as time goes on. (Do You

Trust This Computer?).

Artificial Intelligence could

be used to explore places unsafe

for human beings. We could send

AI to the deep ocean floor to

examine the wild-life or lack

thereof, or out into areas in space

with conditions unsuitable for a

human no matter what suit they

have on. During the sniping in

Figure 2. Da Vinci Robot
Dallas, police used a bomb AI to

deliver a bomb to the sniper and kill him (The Truth About Killer Robots). We also send robots

with Artificial Intelligence to war now instead of sending human beings in order to save lives.

Experts say that Artificial Intelligence will be able to fully analyze situations and minimize the

collateral damage of war, saving the world from at least some death and destruction (Tuck).

Artificial Intelligence helps humanity in so many ways that only a computer with

Artificial Intelligence would be able to categorize them. In an article written by K.K. Rebecca

Lai and Jin Wu on July 2019, they cover how Artificial Intelligence was used to count crowds in

Hong Kong protests. It is important to know the number of people attending the protest to give

an idea of the strength of the movement. Counting the number of people in a huge crowd is
 Saud 7

extremely difficult and Artificial Intelligence made it much easier. Even though the count it

gives is not definitive, it is significantly more accurate than human estimations. The Artificial

Intelligence detects people based on color and shape and tracks figures as they move across the

screen. Facial recognition allows people to not be double-counted. On the July 1st protest in

Hong Kong, the AI team attached seven iPads to two major footbridges. According to the

Artificial Intelligence, 265,000 people marched at the protest (“How A.I. Helped Improve Crowd

Counting in Hong Kong Protests”).

Artificial Intelligence is now even helping us understand, use, and manage emotions

better. Affectiva is an AI program that reads human emotion. Businesses use Affectiva to

analyze customer response to product ideas and their designs, allowing them to create a better

product for their customers. In Osaka, Japan, Hiroshi Ishiguro is creating a human-like robot

named "Erica." Erica is being designed to have human intentions and desires so that it will be

able to more easily understand other human beings (Do You Trust This Computer?).

The scariest part of Artificial Intelligence today is the Artificial Intelligence being used in

the military. Artificial Intelligence is said to have more influence over the military than the

combustion engine. Autonomous weapons are being created with AI, and that is terrifying,

especially because the values of weapon creators are not the same as the general population. This

breaks the first law of Dr. Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” that states a robot must not

injure any human being, or through any inaction, allow a human being to be harmed (Weber).

USA law requires a human to be involved every time an AI kills someone, but other countries

have little or no regulations with Artificial Intelligence weapons (Do You Trust This Computer?).

Another argument against Artificial Intelligence is the issue of privacy. Artificial

Intelligence, because of its access to vast databases, has the ability to know everything about
 Saud 8

every single person. The AI will know more about people than their own mother. The first

Artificial Intelligence ever created is Google. Every time someone searches something on

Google, their AI gets smarter and smarter. There is an extensive dossier on every single person

with a computer. “They know more about you than your own mother” (Do You Trust This

Computer?). As of 2012, the average person leaves a 500-megabyte data footprint every single

day. If someone printed every single person’s data footprint on any given day, double-sided with

size twelve font, the paper stacked up would reach approximately the amount of distance from

the sun to the earth four times (Do You Trust This Computer?). Today, the data footprint of an

individual is much larger. Having so much data on everyone is not evil, it’s what the collectors

of the data could do with it that could be evil. We have to ensure a lot of trust in the owners.

It is important to note that with every revolutionary technology, each had numerous

people that feared the implementation of this technology. When paper became more widely

available, Socrates feared it would cause humanity to become stupid and lose their memory

because things were written down in front of them. Now we know that writing things down

actually improves our memories. When the Wright Brothers first flew their plane, many people

were terrified of planes and said they would kill millions. Now there are airports everywhere

providing fast travel to almost anywhere around the world. There are countless examples of new

technology causing fear in many people, but the technology ends up being more beneficial than

they ever imagined.

Many people believe that the development of Artificial Intelligence will shift all the

power in the world to the people that developed it. I disagree because everyone will be able to

use Artificial Intelligence. The people who developed Artificial Intelligence will just have a lot

of money. But, at MIT, researchers have developed a program that allows almost anyone to
 Saud 9

create AI. Matheson discusses a probabilistic-programming system named "Gen." Users of Gen

write models and algorithms from multiple fields such as computer vision, robotics, and

statistics. This allows users to not have to deal with equations and writing high-performance

code. The Gen program combines diverse techniques allowing better accuracy and speed than

earlier systems. Since Gen is so simple, it can be used by anyone; from novices to experts. One

of the reasons they created Gen was to make automated AI more accessible to people with less

expertise in computer science and math. Gen simplifies data analytics allowing users to generate

sophisticated statistical models that before this program, required a lot of hand-coding to get

accurate results (“New AI Programming Language Goes beyond Deep Learning”).

Artificial Intelligence is here to stay. The development of AI is inevitable. There

is literally nothing that can be done to stop it. Since it cannot be stopped, and it will grow

infinitely, we need to make sure it grows in a way most beneficial for human beings. At the end

of the documentary Do You Trust This Computer? the message: “The pursuit of AI is a multi-

billion-dollar industry with almost no regulations” is showed on a black screen for around thirty

seconds (Do You Trust This Computer?). Artificial Intelligence can be very scary, so humanity

as a whole needs to make sure it is regulated. When asked about the public hysteria around

Artificial Intelligence in an interview with Jerry Kaplan, A Stanford computer scientist, he

replied, “This concern, or at least the public fascination with it, is driven more by Hollywood

blockbusters than fact. While the field of AI is making tremendous progress, the reality is that

it’s nowhere near an immediate a threat as, say, the potential damage from genetically modified

organisms (GMOs) getting loose. With AI, we are likely to have adequate time to see problems

coming, and to address them” (“Stanford Expert Says AI Probably Won't Kill Us All”). There is

no evidence of any kind where a robot with Artificial Intelligence suddenly feels a desire to kill
 Saud 10

human beings, and there is no evidence of anything similar to that happening. The idea of

Artificial Intelligence taking over the world has only been science fiction. Hollywood shows

things like that so often that it has almost been implanted in people’s brains.

The thing we do know is if Artificial Intelligence grows at the rate anticipated (which it

will), it will be thousands of times smarter than us. But we have to remember that Artificial

Intelligence is made to improve humanity’s lives. We must make sure Artificial Intelligence does

not get into the wrong hands because that is more dangerous than any computer. We must make

sure that the only use of Artificial Intelligence is to help us and never cause us any harm.

Artificial intelligence so far has only been helpful for us. It improves our quality of life, our

health, our safety while driving, our businesses, and almost every other aspect of our lives.
 Saud 11

Works Cited

Ayres, Crystal. “16 Artificial Intelligence Pros and Cons.” Vittana.org, vittana.org/16-artificial-
intelligence-pros-and-cons.

“Benefits of Driverless Cars.” Ohio University Online Masters, Ohio University,

onlinemasters.ohio.edu/blog/the-future-of-driving/.

Buchanan, Bruce G. “A (Very) Brief History of Artificial Intelligence.” AI Magazine,

www.aaai.org/AITopics/assets/PDF/AIMag26-04-016.pdf.

Cunningham, Anne C. Artificial Intelligence and the Technological Singularity. Greenhaven

Publishing, 2017.

“Daily Mail.” Daily Mail, 8 Aug. 2015, www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3190436/Four-

armed-cyborg-helping-surgeons-conquer-lung-cancer-New-da-Vinci-robot-allows-
patients-leave-hospital-just-two-days-major-surgery.html#i-46b29257e50ab4bc.

Lai, K.K. Rebecca, et al. “How A.I. Helped Improve Crowd Counting in Hong Kong Protests.”
The New York Times, 3 July 2019,
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/07/03/world/asia/hong-kong-protest-crowd-
ai.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FArtificial%20Intelligence&action=click&conten
tCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPla
cement=3&pgtype=collection.

Lin, Patrick. “Stanford Expert Says AI Probably Won't Kill Us All.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 5
Aug. 2015, www.forbes.com/sites/patricklin/2015/08/04/stanford-expert-says-ai-probably-
wont-kill-us-all/#42b209281bff.

Matheson, Rob. “New AI Programming Language Goes beyond Deep Learning.” MIT News,
MIT News Office, 26 June 2019, news.mit.edu/2019/ai-programming-gen-0626

Monroe, Mark, et al. Do You Trust This Computer? Do You Trust This Computer?, Papercut
Films, 2018, doyoutrustthiscomputer.org/.

Pozdorovkin, Maxim, director. The Truth About Killer Robots. Third Party Films, 2018.

Shapiro, Stuart C. “Artificial Intelligence.” Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence, 2000,

cse.buffalo.edu/~shapiro/Papers/ai.pdf.

Tuck, Jay. “Artificial Intelligence: It Will Kill Us.” TEDx. TEDxHamburgSalon,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrNs0M77Pd4.
 Saud 12

Weber, Richard M. “‘Hey, Siri! Is Artificial Intelligence the Ultimate Oxymoron?’” Journal of
Financial Service Professionals, vol. 73, no. 4, July 2019, pp. 46–50. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=137194607&site=eds-live.