Artificial intelligence is one of the most revolutionary technologies available today. Each passing year witnesses immense innovations in this field. Businesses across all industries around the world are dependent on some or the other form of artificial intelligence to conduct its day-to-day operations. While artificial intelligence is pretty advanced even at present, there are many more innovations that can be possible in the future.
There are many top computer engineering colleges in Maharashtra that offer undergraduate programs with specialisation in artificial intelligence to train coming generations of artificial intelligence engineers. These professionals will be responsible for the future advancement of this technology. Let us take a look at what artificial intelligence is all about, its impact, and the ethical use of this technology around the world.
What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
In the current scenario, we are continuously listening to the word ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI).’ AI is a science where a machine or specifically a computer simulates human intelligence. AI makes the machines or computers to think and work like a human being. AI understands the subject, thinks in that direction and executes the task as per the requirement. AI learns to do the tasks with processing huge amounts of data and modelling the same in their own language.
AI is categorised into two categories: strong AI and weak AI.
Strong AI: also known as Artificial General Intelligence, where the machine will attempt and solve the problems for which it has not been trained. Like a human being, the system will face the situations for which it is not trained. This type of AI is yet not developed.
Weak AI: also known as narrow AI or specialised AI like human intelligence and trained for specific situations like driving a car and curating content etc. Weak AI is specifically designed to perform a single task well. Alexa and other smart assistants, self-driving cars, Google search, Google maps, ChatGPT are some examples of weak AI.
Evolving rapidly, AI is an integral part of our life through supporting healthcare, finance, education and many more applications of daily life. AI is now in the transition phase and trying to navigate itself through the various opportunities and challenges in the coming future.
Impact of AI Across Different Industries
With its extreme capabilities AI is going to affect human beings. It is really difficult to predict the future of any subject or thing, especially when it is going to affect the complete world with its capabilities. AI is going to make tremendous changes everywhere and almost all these changes are in a transition phase. Somewhere it is going to create positive and negative effects.
According to the reports of the International Monetary Fund, AI is going to affect about 40% concerning job opportunities. Whereas for developed countries this will be about 60%, as they are major players with jobs related to human intelligence. While in the case of developing countries, this effect may not be more than 30%. This effect may be positive or negative.
It will contribute to increased productivity, presenting innovative ideas etc. and in terms of negative effects it may lead to diminishing job opportunities, and increasing the economic and education gap between societies. Augmenting human efforts with AI will increase their productivity and fostering their collaboration will help us to increase the productivity of human laborers.
The first industrial revolution introduced ‘automation’, which majorly affected unskilled workers. But AI is going to affect highly skilled employees. The repetitive kinds of tasks which can be easily learnt will be performed easily by AI. AI will not only atomise the repetitive kind of task but also will start thinking about the self. AI is trying to encompass all sectors including technical and non-technical also.
In the field of education, AI will provide personalised tutoring with an improved learning experience. In the field of healthcare AI will play a role in disease diagnosis to personalise medication. AI not only increases production but it will enhance human capabilities with increasing productivity. This will inflow the money with limited people leading to widening the economic gap within societies and nations.
Ethical and Social Aspects of AI
Ethical and societal aspects of AI need to be considered as it is going to cover every facet of life. AI is a training-based algorithm and may present biased results based on data sets used for training. The biased results may result in discriminatory outcomes and may create issues related to resource distribution, criminal judgements and recruitment.
Transparency in the decision-making process of AI is also questionable, as it acts as a ‘black box’ and is difficult to predict about the decision-making procedure. Due to this the accountability and consequences of the AI decision are also major issues. Several times AI uses personal data, so the privacy and misuse of personal data is crucial and is of ethical concern.
With the use of AI for various applications it is becoming an integral part of various systems including critical and security systems also. In these situations, there is a threat of cyber-attacks and unauthorised access to data creating societal consequences.
Conclusion
Overall, AI is going to integrate with our day-to-day life and somewhere it is going to improve our job opportunities and economy along with ethical and societal consequences. AI is going to improve productivity and efficiency with minimising human errors. During all this we need to consider the cost of AI development and risk to human jobs. With the potential of great impact in the coming days, AI is inevitable.