WRITTEN BY SHELLY FAN, THIS BOOK IN THE SERIES ‘THE BIG IDEA’ ELABORATES THE ORIGINS AND ABILITIES OF AI IN THIS DAY AND HOW IT INFILTRATES INTO ALMOST EVERY INDUSTRY
TEXT: PRATARN TEERATADA
PHOTO: KETSIREE WONGWAN
(For Thai, press here)
Shelly Fan
Thames & Hudson, 2019
6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
144 pages
ISBN 978-0-500-29457-4
The fear of the possibility of Artificial Intelligence or AI replacing humans has become even more substantial when the news broke about the victory of AI over the reigning world chess champion, following with countless pieces of news about AI stealing jobs from people in many industries. With the prediction speculating occupations that will be entirely substituted by robots within the next ten years, the concern seems to grow deeper and spread wider. Will humans become insignificant in the future world?
One of the most important qualities of AI is machine learning or the program designed to understand the relationships of data, which utilizes such data to automate analytical model building. With the ability to provide precise data analysis, the method has resulted in AI taking over several positions that once belonged to humans.
The book ‘The Big Idea’ elaborates the origins and abilities of AI in this day and age and the way it has infiltrated its way into almost every industry as every business desires to take advantage of AI. A part of the conclusion writes, “Under open and intelligent discourse, AI will not replace us, Rather it will profoundly transform humanity for the better.”
How will human beings transform into a better version of themselves, the book doesn’t provide a definite answer or direction. But those who stay unchanged and un-evolved will certainly be eliminated.
Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion and one of the best chess players in the world who had been defeated by an IBM supercomputer wrote in his book, Deep Thinking, that Data Pack is probably mankind’s most important weapon and perhaps the last and most valuable tool we need when confronting AI. We still have time, although not much, to develop our potential and prepare ourselves for the imminent future. While today AI surpasses humans at remembering, calculating and making faster and more accurate decisions, what it lacks is the ability to think creatively.
We’ve always believed that creative thinking is practically impossible for AI, thinking that a computer can only take orders and operate according to commands. Nevertheless, continuous developments and broadened range of commands increases the possibility for AI to excel past human beings. It’s the same as the AI that learnt millions of chess plays and studied every possible counter attack humans can come up with, making it able to connect all the data and invent new methods, and finally conquer even some of the most intelligent people. What this means is that those millions of attempts of learning patterns can eventually be developed into a creative ability. Will AI reach the level where they formulate their own conscience and imagination, it remains to be seen.
While AI still hasn’t entirely replaced humans, the likelihood is growing. All we can do is find our strengths as fast as we can because they are the key to our survival.