Is AI Taking Over Humans?

“ Human civilization began four million years ago, when brain volumes began
climbing rapidly in the hominid line. Fifty thousand years ago with the rise of
Homo sapiens. Ten thousand years ago with the invention of civilization. Five
hundred years ago with the invention of the printing press. Fifty years ago with
the invention of the computer. In less than thirty years, human civilization will
end.”
This is an extract from an essay,'Staring into singularity', where the essay’s author
predicts that humanity would cease to exist, with the emergence of AI, that
surpasses human-level intelligence in a broad array of areas.
A heartiest good afternoon respected Jury Members, Principal Mam, learned
teachers and the audience. I am Bhagyashree Korde of Class XB and I am here to
debate on the topic ‘Is AI taking over humans?’
Artificial Intelligence is the ability of a computer-controlled robot to perform
tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings, in today’s date AI is involved in
different sectors such as cyber security, finance, government, health, law, service
sector,, research, business and e commerce. We also use AI in every other activity
these days and this has made our lives faster and efficient.
A question arises, are all these forms of AI are dependent on humans or are there
forms of AI which are independent of human control? Yes, we have developed
such robots and they are called ‘autonomous robots’ that are capable of making
their decisions on the basis of their observation of the environment. Till this date,
autonomous robots have only been used for logistics, E commerce and for
Research and Development. Countries like China and Russia have also developed
autonomous machine guns, called killerbots, which are programmed to attack
targets with no human control. It is so scary that a plate sized killer bot is enough
to kill a room full of people.
Physicist Stephen Hawking believed that in the coming decades, AI could offer
"incalculable benefits and risks" such as "technology outsmarting financial
markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and
developing weapons we cannot even understand.” How is that possible? Let’s
take an example. A chess playing AI made by humans takes 80 seconds to defeat
an average player. Suppose we develop an autonomous AI system with the task to
develop another chess playing AI systems. The AI system thus developed will be
able to defeat the player within less than half a minute. And once computers
become better at a particular task, they are not just a bit better. They are
exponentially better, and they can perform functions in a fraction of a second,
where a human would need hours or days for the same task.
This would be an Intelligence Explosion with unknown consequences, with robots
developing more and more AI systems. This will increase the involvement of
robots in our lives, making it terrifying. How? Life after the intelligence explosion
would be very difficult, human beings will have to compete also with robots for
job opportunities. Imagine having a critical surgery, entering the operation
theatre and finding out that the surgeon is a robot, will you be comfortable? No,
you probably won’t trust the robot as much as you’d have trusted a human
surgeon. Because a human understands the value of life and a robot doesn’t.
Imagine going for a job interview can finding humanoid robots sitting there in a
queue for their chance. AI being more accurate, precise and faster as compared to
humans, employers will prefer having robots to work for them. Now imagine what
if robots have the same rights as humans? That would mean robots can be
involved in politics and contest in elections against human leaders. People will
obviously vote more for the robots as they will surely fulfil the promises and the
country will thus progress at a faster pace. Once they come to power the robots
can become dictators, robot-oriented parliaments can suppress the humans, who
will by then, become helpless without AI support. The killer bots can mass fire and
kill each and everyone. This is exactly what Stephen Hawkings must have thought
when he said that AI could develop to an extent that it may spell the end of
human race.
The writing on the wall is very clear. All logic points to the creation of a
superintelligence that could take over the running of the world given the right
condition. So, should we panic and stop making AI systems, which make our lives
super easy? Should we worry about AI taking over right away? Not really. Despite
all its possibilities, Artificial Intelligence is still believed to be at its very first stage
of development. All that we are seeing today is just a precursor to a much smarter
and intelligent version that is yet to come What we need is a world where the
intelligence explosion can be leveraged for its advantages, but only in
circumstances where humans prosper and AI is in control. Superintelligent AI
promises to change humanity's destiny in unprecedented ways, and this future
needs to be actively shaped rather than passively anticipated. It’s just the
realization that we need to make conscious choices without delay will ensure that
the coming generations live a life as good as ours and human life will sustain.
Thank You
Bhagyashree Korde
XB08
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