Artificial and human intelligence – Striking the right balance

Without our knowledge, Artificial Intelligence has swarmed us in almost all facets of our life!!! We happen to visit a website one day and get to see advertisements based on our previous searches. We see driverless cars getting tested by various companies and promise to be a reality very soon. We have got many digital assistants like Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, etc. to act on our commands. Who would have thought a few years back that we would be able to play music or book a flight ticket simply through our voice, without manually touching any gadget?

Today Artificial Intelligence is used in almost all industries, and is beginning to show encouraging and positive results in applications ranging from identification of suspect in a bomb explosion, diagnosis of diseases, complicated surgeries done by robots, identification of fraudulent transactions carried out using credit cards, target marketing on online websites, financial advice based on our spending/ saving pattern, construction of artificial homes with light sensors, etc.

Consider house hunting. Be it for renting, selling or buying, hunting for property or accommodation has become really easy with many filters for searches, and systems can throw up many details like how the locality is, price range over a period, etc. One can subscribe for alerts for price change and accordingly take a decision too!

Most business today use chatbots including banks, online commercial websites, etc., to clarify customer queries in real-time. There are arguments about whether the results shown by such chatbots are effective or not; however, over a period of time, as they learn various patterns, they get better in displaying the most appropriate/best suited results.

This has already created a concern about job security among workforces across industries. They are concerned whether they will continue to have their jobs or will machines soon take over. On one hand, this is a valid concern but on the other, can Artificial Intelligence rule the world in the future? It is rather unlikely. Both, human and artificial intelligence need to co-exist. AI cannot replace human attributes such as empathy and personal touch.

Life will become monotonous, if our day to day activities are controlled by machines with no human interactions. Irrespective of the amount of learning undertaken by a machine, it can never match a human being’s gut feel or emotions and react to the situation/ emergency accordingly. But at the same time, a machine can go through any amount of data significantly quickly and arrive at a pattern, a task human beings would potentially take days to do.

Even in such a technologically advanced world, people will still look to be with other human beings to share their feelings. Gadgets can take away attention of human beings for some time but at the end of the day, we are surrounded by people!!! It looks great to see animation movies where machines become a human’s friend but this has a limit and can never be an alternative to a real person.

Both types of intelligence have their advantages and disadvantages. However they need to co-exist for a better world, a world which will also be considerably competitive as ecosystems comprising humans and machines both, will race against each other in business, in geopolitics, and everywhere else. More regulations (need) to be built to enable using Artificial Intelligence in a better / positive way as there is always a tendency to utilize every modern technology in a negative way and harm (our own race/ human race). The future is bright indeed, if we strike a balance between both the types of intelligence.