Sophisticated machines are becoming “smarter” and humans rely more on them than never. In the industrial world, AI (artificial intelligence) is replacing more and more workers. The last time I went to a CVS, I didn’t need the assistance of a cashier.
It is feared that one day the artificial intelligence will surpass humans and that moment in time is called the technological singularity. Guess what, it has already begun.
“Siri, remind me to take out the trash when I get home.”
“Siri, remind me to call Fred when I leave work. “
“Siri, call my doctor.”
“Siri, remind me to use the restroom at 4 p.m.”
These are all the commands we give to a super advanced computer. It is amazing and frightening all at once. When we don’t ask Siri, we ask Google to tell us what we were supposed to know or remember.
Who still remembers someone else’s phone number or checks their daily agenda? If it were not for Facebook, most of us would not remember the birthday of our loved ones.
P.S. thank you Facebook.
When we need to know something about someone, instead of looking for ways to directly contact them, we turn to social media or just Google their names.
Something is certain, our reliance on artificial intelligence, like smartphones for example, has an impact on our brain. We think and remember less. We are not losing our own intelligence, but it seems as though we have handed over our capacity to remember over to the machines.
Our schedule, agenda, appointment, formal and informal knowledge etc. have been trusted in the hands of an external brain known as a smartphone.
It is a fact that we rely more and more on artificial intelligence to know or remember things. In that sense, they become more “knowing” or “intelligent” while most of us retain less knowledge about ourselves.
The singularity has already started when men have given up so much of their capacities and let the machines do the job.
Although machines are good at storing information, calculating and pushing complex logarithms, they do not have a mind and will never be able to think, some may object. “Why can’t a machine have a mind of its own one day,” some other may ask.
The answer to the mind question depends on the side you stand on philosophically. It depends on whether you are a Cartesian dualist or a machine-state functionalist.
Even the internationally renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking is concerned about such a possibility. “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” Hawking told the BBC News.
Elon Musk (Tesla and SpaceX) called it the human race’s biggest existential threat. He called for the establishment of national or international regulations on the development of AI.
Jonel Juste
PS: This article was published in The Reporter
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