Purushotaman on AI Vs. Humans Intelligence


Purushotaman on AI Vs. Humans Intelligence

CR: To make perspective right, what is Artificial Intelligence? How far are we to over exploit it and not let it take over?

Veneeth: AI is an exciting technology use case but due to sheer nature of this solution, it is normal for people to relate this to Sci-Fi and ideas around AI as irrational. Discus­sion on AI borders around cynicism but a large majority of us see a gre

at deal of opportunity too. It’s about a system working on large volumes of data and algorithms to arrive at a pattern to either predict an outcome or perform a task. Yes, when this very system starts to learn as it goes, that’s when it becomes so accurate that the Humans then get challenged.

CR: Man vs Machine is probably the second best bo­gey after God vs Lucifer. How do you perceive this face off?

Veneeth: Yes, indeed it is the second-best bogey or at least it is being made out to be. I don’t see this as a case of Frankenstein where the machines and robots take over and make the Humans their slave. I believe the very vulnerabilities of Humans will be their differentia­tor which a machine cannot catch up to.

CR: Elon Musk once in his interview said that, ‘With AI we are summoning the demons’. Even Stephen Hawking holds the same opinion. If a world-renowned astrophysicist and a dynamic innovator have such opin­ions, does that mean the innovative ideas are leading us to doomsday?

Veneeth: While I agree that in Theory it is a possibil­ity that the same machines we are innovating on could self-learn and move above us but the Humans would still hold the key, literally, to the device. Yes we will have cases wherein things would go wrong and machines could go berserk and cause damage but Humans would still bring it under control. There is merit in what Elon Musk or Stephen Hawking is saying but I do not believe it is Dooms Day and I am confident of Humans always being in control.

CR: The AI system learns from historical data and parameterizes that learning into higher order or logic, or pattern recognition, and does its job. But how much higher can it go? What happens when an entirely new phenomenon happens?

Veneeth: So whether it is the machine winning the game of Jeopardy or AlphaGo’s win against Lee Sedol, the machines are learning fast and it will be difficult to beat them. But then the Human brain is still power­ful to react to adhoc and unpredicted scenarios in the best possible way which a machine may struggle. The Spooky part is when you don’t know whether the Ma­chine lost to you because it did not know how to win OR whether AlphaGO did that to learn how Lee Sedol reacts to a Win!

CR: AI is at best one level higher than basic com­puter programming. Humans are arguably many levels higher. What’s your verdict?

Veneeth: True Humans are many levels higher and will continue to work on ensuring they are in control. We will have the machines do all the work which re­quires scale and volume.

AI is still nowhere near having the same powerful cross domain ability to learn and plan like the human brain; cortex still has some algorithmic tricks which the machines can’t do. If we consider a smarter human as Ed Witton or a Albert Einstein the current state of AI is somewhere close to a Village Idiot. For example in a Healthcare environment, the Doctor will continue to use technology to improve patient outcomes but I can’t see a time when the doctors would be replaced by a ma­chine entirely.