I believe artificial intelligence technology is an ever-growing part of our lives and will be essential in the future as technology becomes more complex. Currently, it aids us in a wide range of things from manufacturing to security and travel. However, the potential for artificial intelligence technology in the future is limitless. With autonomous cars on the horizon governments and large cooperation’s across the world invest billions into this growing industry of research and development as they see the importance and potential of this technology.
Currently, one large advantage of AI technology is overcoming human limitations to research and develop our understanding of things such as the ocean floor and space exploration. Because they are machines, we can modify and use certain materials to build them to withstand extreme conditions to explore places humans are unable to. In the future, this could help human understanding of many dangerous mysteries such as black holes. Also, dangerous jobs such mining can be automated by robots, preserving human life and also increase efficiency of resource gathering to supply the ever-growing demand as development happens elsewhere. However, AI are not only advantageous physically but, in some cases, also mentally as they do not have emotions to cloud judgement. This is useful in tasks that require difficult decisions as they can provide a logical answer which is not affected by emotions. However, this isn’t totally positive as the popular situation of the autonomous vehicle veering towards a dog or a child has heavy arguments against AI technology. Because of the lack of emotion and morality, AI are unable to give moral responses which deem it unable to perform certain tasks ‘correctly’.
Also, the use artificial intelligence for automation greatly increases the efficiency of repetitive tasks by reducing the chance of error and increasing consistency compared to human labour and providing a 24/7 ongoing process without breaks or being distracted. This has greater output compared to human labour but to the cost of job losses for people. Furthermore, AI technology is not only useful for work, but for entertainment also. For example, AI in computer games have come a long way in recent years and have been programmed to act and play like a human.
However, like everything artificial technology has its down sides. One major disadvantage is cost. The creation of complex AI requires huge costs as it takes a lot of time and hard work to create. And once created, large maintenance and repair costs are presented as software requires constant updating as AI cannot change itself, humans have to program updated code into them. Also, in the case of a breakdown, large chunks of code can be lost which wastes a lot of time and money.
Also, a very undesirable result may worry much of the labour force in jobs that are repetitive such as manufacturing, which is the replacement of humans for robots. The use of robots can cause large scale unemployment which will cause thousands of jobs to be lost. Because machines don’t need a salary, can have non-stop production, and are very quick, many company CEO’s choose to replace part of their workforce with machinery as they get greater output with lower running costs. This makes AI a very tempting path for many employers to use.
Also, many people are speculating about the future of AI that they will become too smart and too developed, leading to artificial intelligence potentially taking over the human race. However, in today’s world AI are already a large threat to the online world. In the wrong hands, AI can be used to launch cyber-attacks on any online network, risking the leak of private and confidential information. For example, in 2013-2014 Yahoo was the victim of a major cyber-attack, leaking private information of over 3 billion of its users. Also, not only is it just large organisations that are at risk but us in our everyday lives. Over the years we have become so dependent on AI powered things such as our phones, computers and cars that without them we would be unable to do simple tasks that technology does for us.
Overall if used in the right ways for the right purposes, artificial intelligence can greatly benefit mankind and accelerate development rates of technologies across the world to help eradicate problems in the world such as poverty or crime. I believe that in the future AI will become a core part of human life and will be essential for our survival, for example the future of space exploration heavily relies on AI to explore and give information on new places instead of risking human life.
Computer Science Notes 