Imagine getting up on a beautiful Monday morning where you have to rush to office and a lot of work has to be done but you are least worried. Breakfast is to be prepared for the kids and yourself and there is no maid. But you are least worried. You are still feeling a bit jetlagged after you returned from your trip yesterday and are in no mood to drive your car. But you are least worried.
And why is that? Because all the work is done for you neatly in an automated manner. It requires no human involvement and all your problems are taken care of!
Do you smell a wisp of artificial intelligence already? Yes. It is this exceptionally advanced technology which involves the creation of computers and simulates them accordingly to match the mere intelligence of a human.
To capture the cognitive skills of man and do equally remarkable jobs! All of it sounds definitely wonderful as who would not love a helping hand in all his chores and having a robot around committing minimal error would actually be very cool! But no matter how ecstatic the entire process sounds, do you think it is always ethical of how much we meddle with Nature and tweak its mechanisms to put it into our favor? Is it a good sign to let technology wrap its fingers of magnificence around us in such a manner that it is all which remains in the end? Should we let it consume us such that we forget the difference between what is morally right and what is ethically wrong at the same time?
They are probably the two sides of the same coin and we should mull over it before artificial intelligence succeeds in completely taking over the human world and we feel misplaced in our own Universe! The thought itself is quite disturbing already! Now, let us make a note of how ethics plays a key role in the field of artificial intelligence and decide for ourselves on whose side would we want to be!
1) Unemployment: Well, in this rat-race of Life, it is true that there is a neck-to-neck competition within each one and it is still the generation of the survival of the fittest. Every company tries recruiting the best officers so that each one can practically take the firm to its peak of success. How is this possible? When all the brightest minds come together as a team. So, more the number of people, more the brainstorming of better and bigger ideas and thus, faster and more effective way of completing important tasks. Imagine, with the skill and knowledge of the experts: such computers are being created which speed up the same work done by 10 humans.
They are more brilliant and less prone to error because of the way they have been designed. But, looking at the dark side of it, if slowly and gradually all the work is grabbed off the tray by these automated bots, then what shall be left for human survival? Wouldn’t it be a threat to their jobs as it is being said that 800 million jobs might be forgone worldwide to automation by the year 2030!
Not having a job would directly impact the family, attack the level of confidence, you might start to doubt your sense of capability and as if competition within our ourselves wasn’t enough, we shall now have to sharpen our claws to scratch the bots out of our lives! It is scary because they shall definitely be trained to behave in a much smarter manner and the question remains: will we be able to take it? The prominence of the machine which started in the first place for our benefit but has now taken the reigns of our life in its own hands and becomes a case of dominance?
2) Inequality: This could be a very big ethical question. What are the simplest life rules people follow as of now? Work hard and earn your bread. You contribute your skills and knowledge to a company and receive monthly wages or payment in return. However, imagine a world being ruled by AI-driven companies. Human labor requirement becomes quite less and thus, revenue will go to lesser people. The AI companies shall boom in the market while the manual laborers shall have a hard time making ends meet and looking after their families. This makes us think if these automated machines are a boon or bane?
3) Relationships: This is something around which all our lives revolve. Starting from our parents to our siblings to our friends, we are all bonded by this loving thread of love and thrive to maintain happy and healthy relationships.
We react because we are naturally fed with emotions. Our life is sprinkled with joy, laughter, anger, and tears: all picked up from the emotions palette. Now, imagine an automated robot doing the same? While you are away from your grandmother, a bot takes care of her and narrates her favorite stories to put her to sleep?
Your mom suddenly falls ill and with no one around, this bot is programmed to instantly provide her with medicines to revive her health! Will we come to such a stage in life where we shall talk to machines like we converse among ourselves and they shall go on to make us insecure by nurturing better relationships with their efficiency?
Taking care of the elderly, being your pal in a bout of loneliness or simply feeding the curiosity of the human mind with numerous advanced features which are not in the capacity of a normal human being to perform? Coming in between me and my loved ones just like that, I don’t think I would like that!
However, at the end of the day: a machine is a machine and shall only perform actions as it shall be instructed to and the presence of mind granted to human shall still help him remain on the top of his game! So much for artificial intelligence!
Hail humans!
