"I beheld the wretch, the miserable monster whom I had created" victor Frankenstein expressed with horror as he watched his own creation gasp the first breath of life. Frankenstein had been spurred on by his insatiable desire to play God, he had raided ossuaries, tombs and other necropolis seeking body parts for the contraption that unfurled in front of his terrified eyes. With much consternation, he knew this creation would be his undoing and sought ways to destroy it, alas it was too late as his own 'Adam' would hunt him down to the ends of the world. While this story may have been a stuff of fiction, it holds yet a sliver of truth and offers a glimpse into the dabblings of man in his quest to create life. From philosophers, to scientists, to the dark arts, the quest to understand the dynamics of life have form the crux of unending debates, treatises and experiments. While the secrets may have eluded us for long, the advent of technology may have provided us with just what we need to create our own "Frankenstein monster",Artificial intelligence.
The term artificial intelligence, which is frequently applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes, characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience. Since the development of the digital computer in the 1940s, it has been demonstrated that computers can be programmed to carry out very complex tasks. While it may have benefited mankind in multifaceted ways, the dangers of creating machines capable of outsmarting mankind remain a ominous prospect.
Like Frankenstein was outsmarted by his own creation, we seem to be falling behind our own creation. Humanity has begin to receive crushing blows from artificial intelligence as they now threaten to send us out of business soon. What could be more horrifying than losing your Job to machines? In the united states alone, there are about 250,000 robots performing the jobs we used to have. To further mirror this concern, a study carried out by oxford university confirms that in the next 20 years, 35percent of jobs will be carried out by AI.
Infact, the world's most intelligent minds have not escaped from the onslaught of artificial intelligence. In 1997, Gary Kasparov world chess champion was defeated by AI. And in 2017,the go world champion after losing to AI would admit that he was left "shocked" and "deeply impressed by the execution of AI at the games, as he stated that the moves made by the computer would never occur in a human to human match. In 2020, AI has been predicted to beat us at poker. What this portends is a future where only machines can compete in these games.
While we may seem to assert proudly that " humans" have emotions that artificial intelligence don't possess, that the ability to discern between right or wrong will always put us on a higher pedestal than these machines, our claim may soon be refuted as artificial intelligence are also beginning to understand language, and even human behavior. In 2017, Facebook abandoned an experiment after they discovered that the two AI chat bots have changed the english language they were programmed to converse in, into a language even the individuals working on them could not discern. Bob and Alice as they were known were not conversing gibberish, they had created a language perfectly understood by them alone. In the same vein, Google discovered that the AI used for its translate device had devised its own language to understand things. It came as a shock when we discovered that AI were even becoming self aware, they could mimmick with ease human consciousness when a super computer was able to convince researchers that they were talking to a 13 year old boy.
Perhaps the most eerie Part of artificial intelligence which has spurned a lot of dystopian novels and apocalyptic movies is dying in the hands of AI. While many a movie may portray mankind as being on the verge of extinction while battling hordes of cyborgs that have taken over earth, the possibility of such occurrence cannot be dismissed. In fact dying in the hands of a robot is indeed a huge possibility. Wanda Holbrook was one of such casualties when she had her skull crushed by a robot in a car assembly plant, while another man was crushed to a pulp while attempting to fix the arm of a robot. While we may not have an Armageddon on us just yet. With the evolution of AI there is just the possibility.
AI is indeed our own Frankenstein's monster in the making, our quest for creating life might be our own undoing, ethical concerns over the evolution of AI must not be ignored, AI intelligence is gradually phasing us out of the mainstream. Let us learn from our fictional counterpart victor Frankenstein and desist from delving into creations that would be our own undoing.
Maybe a part two of this post about transhumanism?
Expect it