Artificial Intelligence: Threat or Tool

“If we do it right, we might be able to evolve a form of work that taps into our uniquely
human capabilities and restores our humanity. The ultimate paradox is that this technology
may become a powerful catalyst that we need to reclaim our humanity” (John Hagel).

INTRODUCTION
With the fast and rapid development of technology, more specifically computer science, the
topic of artificial intelligence has been more constant in the media as of late. It has impacted a
large aspect in the technological realm, in stuff like neural networks, algorithms, and adaptive
learning, and it continues to progress at a steady rate. But before we take a deeper dive into
the aspects of artificial intelligence, a common understanding of the progress of AI.

The term artificial intelligence was coined in 1956, but AI has become more popular today
thanks to increased data volumes, advanced algorithms, and improvements in computing
power and storage. Early AI research in the 1950s explored topics like problem-solving and
symbolic methods. In the 1960s, the US Department of Defense took interest in this type of
work and began training computers to mimic basic human reasoning. For example, the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) completed street mapping projects
in the 1970s. And DARPA produced intelligent personal assistants in 2003, long before Siri,
Alexa or Google Assistant were household names. This early work paved the way for the
automation and formal reasoning that we see in computers today, including decision support
systems and smart search systems that can be designed to complement and augment human
abilities. While Hollywood movies and science fiction novels depict AI as human-like robots
that take over the world, the current evolution of AI technologies is not that scary – or quite
that smart. Instead, AI has evolved to provide many specific benefits in every industry.
However, in the scientific community, there has been a lot of concern that AI will overtake
humans in the foreseeable future. AI has demonstrated at times that it can do many things that
humans simply just are not able to do. But this paper is going to support the claim that AI is
beneficial and will be an integral part of the technological life of humanity.

MAIN BODY
The first thing that supports the claim of AI being an integral part of humanity is that it
improves the speed of production and information whenever it is used. AI analyzes more and
deeper data using neural networks that have many hidden layers. Building a fraud detection
system with five hidden layers was almost impossible a few years ago. All that has changed
with incredible computer power and big data. You need lots of data to train deep learning
models because they learn directly from the data. The more data you can feed them, the more
accurate they become. AI also gets the most out of data. When algorithms are self-learning,
the data itself can become intellectual property. The answers are in the data; you just have to
apply AI to get them out. Since the role of the data is now more important than ever before, it
can create a competitive advantage. If you have the best data in a competitive industry, even
if everyone is applying similar techniques, the best data will win.
Second of all, AI makes the lifestyle of everyone more seamless and convenient. But some
people might think that they do not even use AI in their lives, and that is not true because AI
is in places that people might not think it is in there. One place that you might not know AI is
in is social media. Social media artificial intelligence makes it easier for users to locate and
communicate with friends and business associates. From tweet recommendations and fighting
inappropriate or racist content to deep learning helping Facebook draw value from a larger
portion of its unstructured datasets created by almost 2 billion people updating their statuses
293,000 times per minute. Another example is the use of chatbots, where it recognizes words
and phrases to (hopefully) deliver helpful content to customers who have common questions.
Sometimes, chatbots are so accurate that it seems as if you are talking to a real person. Digital
assistants are also used in many smart devices, like your phone and tv and such. Apple’s Siri,
Google Now, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana are digital assistants that help users
perform various tasks, from checking their schedules and searching for something on the
web, to sending commands to another app. AI is an important part of how these apps work
because they learn from every single user interaction. When apps like Google Maps calculate
traffic and construction to find the quickest route to your destination, that is AI at work. As
an example, Google Maps offers directions based on the fastest route from Berlin to Potsdam
according to the usual traffic. Orange sections of the route indicate where traffic is slower.
Artificial Intelligence makes our lives more efficient every day, with AI that powers many
programs and services that help us do everyday things such as connecting with friends, using
an email program, or using a ride-share service.

The last thing that needs to be mention in AI’s advantage is that it is capable to do tasks that
humans cannot or at least cannot do better. For example, making AI itself. Machines have
built machines for a long time. Therefore it is not unreasonable to think that AI could build
better AI than any human could. In theory, AI can pull this off, but it is not certain if it can be
done in reality. Both Google’s AutoML and Microsoft’s DeepCoder hold an unprecedented
capacity to build the next generation of AI. DeepCoder does not simply copy the building
blocks of code as researchers have given it to it. The algorithm looks at how the codes fit
together, how they function and it learns and recognizes other codes. AI is also better at
providing more accurate medical diagnoses. Ever since the achievements of AI has been the
talk out of town, a major focus area for their use has been in medical diagnosis. For example
in the field of oncology and diagnosis of cancer, it is challenging for humans to have an
accurate diagnosis. According to research by University Hospitals Birmingham. The delivery
of results by AI systems correctly detected a disease state 87% of the time – compared with
86% for healthcare professionals – and correctly gave the all-clear 93% of the time,
compared with 91% for human experts. More recently, IBM has used Watson’s ability to
absorb huge volumes of information. That will help them with diagnosing rare illnesses.
Some of which most doctors may only see within a few cases in their lifetime. It will help
doctors at the Centre for Undiagnosed and Rare Diseases at the University Hospital Marburg,
Germany, deal with the thousands of patients referred to them yearly. As well as with the
thousands of pages of medical records that are supplied by the patients to be analyzed. AI
can now transcribe audio better than humans. Microsoft’s researchers have been
tweaking an AI-based automated speech recognition system so that it performs as well as, or
better than, people. They have proven that through testing. During a test implemented by the
National Institute of Standards and Technology, this AI system had an error rate of 5.9%, the
same as human transcribers that Microsoft hired. When the test was replicated, it had an error
rate of 11.1%. This was almost matching the human score of 11.3%. This shows us that AI
leaves little room for error in audio transcription and is certainly not any worse than we are.

As a whole, there are a lot of things that AI can do that makes the world better, but we also
cannot ignore the potential threats it has. As AI is replacing most of the repetitive tasks,
human involvement is becoming less, which will cause a major problem in the employment
standards. Every organization is looking to replace the minimum qualified individuals with
AI robots that can do similar work with much more efficiency. The consensus among many
experts is that several professions will be automated in the next five to 10 years. A group of
senior-level tech executives who comprise the Forbes Technology Council named 13,
including insurance underwriting, warehouse and manufacturing jobs, customer service,
research, and data entry, long haul trucking, and a somewhat disconcertingly broad category
titled “Any Tasks That Can Be Learned.”

Another thing to consider is the potential destructiveness of AI. Most researchers agree that a
superintelligent AI is unlikely to exhibit human emotions like love or hate and that there is no
reason to expect AI to become intentionally benevolent or malevolent. Instead, when
considering how AI might become a risk, experts think of two scenarios most likely:
1. The AI is programmed to do something devastating: Autonomous weapons
are artificial intelligence systems that are programmed to kill. In the hands of the
wrong person, these weapons could easily cause mass casualties. Moreover, an
AI arms race could inadvertently lead to an AI war that also results in mass
casualties. To avoid being thwarted by the enemy, these weapons would be
designed to be extremely difficult to simply “turn off,” so humans could
plausibly lose control of such a situation. This risk is one that’s present even with
narrow AI but grows as levels of AI intelligence and autonomy increase.
2. The AI is programmed to do something beneficial, but it develops a
destructive method for achieving its goal: This can happen whenever we fail to
fully align the AI’s goals with ours, which is strikingly difficult. If you ask an
obedient intelligent car to take you to the airport as fast as possible, it might get
you there chased by helicopters and covered in vomit, doing not what you
wanted but literally what you asked for. If a superintelligent system is tasked
with an ambitious geoengineering project, it might wreak havoc with our
ecosystem as a side effect, and view human attempts to stop it as a threat to be
met.

As previously stated, the concern about advanced AI is not about malevolence but
competence. A super-intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing the goals it has,
and if those goals are not aligned with ours, we have a problem.
The final thing that needs to be addressed is the possibility that humanity might be too reliant
on AI. This can happen when businesses assume they can blindly rely on the AI model AI is
a great servant but a poor master. AI can be fantastic at triaging or automating processes up to
80-85% of “grunt-work” that would normally take 10 times longer for humans to do, but that
still leaves 15-20% of the work that requires subjective human oversight. This approach will
avoid biased outcomes. The disadvantages can be overcome if businesses approach AI as a
technology that can be leveraged to help employees and not replace their functions, and AI
needs to adapt to changes in the business workflows in an ongoing manner.

CONCLUSION
So as a whole, Artificial Intelligence is a new creation that will affect humanity in the long
run. AI can help humanity in so many ways, Artificial Intelligence makes our lives more
efficient every day. AI powers many programs and services that help us do everyday things
such as connecting with friends, using an email program, or using a ride-share service. But
the potential of AI affecting humanity is bad or destructive. We must accept the fact that
whether or not we think it is good or bad, the incoming wave of AI technology will appear.
At the very least, people should be aware of this incoming evolution, to know that AI will be
a part of everyone’s lives. Because this is the future, and people need to be aware of artificial
intelligence.

SOURCES
1. Mihajlovic, Ilija. “How Artificial Intelligence Is Impacting Our Everyday Lives And
How You Already Encounter It Every Day.” towards data science, June 13 2019,
https://towardsdatascience.com/how-artificial-intelligence-is-impacting-our-everyday-
lives-eae3b63379e1
2. Roe, David. “ A Look at the Downsides of Artificial Intelligence.” reworked, April 30
2020, https://www.reworked.co/information-management/a-look-at-the-downsides-of-
artificial-intelligence/
3. “ 5 Things AI Does Better Than Humans in 2019.” wiredelta, June 22 2020,
https://wiredelta.com/5-things-ai-does-better-than-humans-2019/
4. “Artificial Intelligence : What it is and why it matters.” sas, 2020,
https://www.sas.com/en_id/insights/analytics/what-is-artificial-
intelligence.html#world
5. “Artificial Intelligence’s Impact on the Future of Jobs.” builtin, August 27 2019,
https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-replacing-jobs-creating-jobs