Do not worry about Artificial Intelligence taking away jobs!

If anything, you better worry about “Natural Dumbness”!
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If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you’ve definitely heard about Artificial Intelligence (AI) or machine learning. AI refers to the capability of machines or robots to imitate intelligent human behaviour. You’ve probably also heard arguments on all sides from thought leaders and policy makers about what AI is going to mean for society.

Optimists talk about how AI will eliminate mundane work and make life more enriching for human beings. Doomsday predictors talk about how AI is going to result in machines developing cognitive ability and becoming more intelligent than human beings and eventually taking over the world. Policy makers worry about the need to rapidly re-skill the workforce and make them ready to take on jobs that perhaps do not exist today.
I am not going to foretell how this all will eventually play out. What I do believe is that AI is here to stay and take away jobs. I actually believe we are at the cusp of a larger and more troubling problem.
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I would like to illustrate my concerns through a simple graphic.

Humans, I would argue, are born “Naturally Curious”. This natural curiosity has powered innovation. All inventions, on some level, are the marriage of natural human curiosity and necessity. These inventions have generally made life and society better from the humble wheel to a complex space station.
This synergistic collaboration between the curious man and machine now however seems to have reached a point where machines are gradually reducing the cognitive ability of man and also impacting our curiosity. A few day-to-day examples in my own life that seem to be pointers (notwithstanding the fact that these may just be due to my aging!).

• I cannot seem to perform simple cognitive tasks without aide from my smart phone or a computer. Examples: Navigating a familiar route from Place A to Place B, remembering my daughter’s telephone number, undertaking simple multiplications or spelling a simple word correctly.
• Upon landing in a new place, I seem to be completely oblivious to my surroundings and the people around me such as my taxi driver. Instead I seem to focus my entire journey to the hotel on all those “missed” messages and social media updates. That curious conversation with the chatty taxi driver to learn more about a new place and local culture seems to have been killed.

A neuroscientist would probably say that these are due to the blocking of neural pathways in your brain. For a layman like me, I brush it off because it’s just me being lazy and perhaps getting more enjoyment from those social media updates instead of having to bother taxing my brain.
Two critical questions come to my mind:

1. How far can this go and can this eventually result in a move of humans towards the bottom quadrant of the intelligence spectrum leading to “Natural Dumbness”
2. What can we do about it?

The answer on some level to Question 1 is probably “I don’t know” because Google won’t tell me the answer! But more seriously, I would love to be proven wrong and I hope that AI will make us smarter, create more jobs and more enriched lives. Taking a more tempered view of the situation, I do believe there are some solutions that will form a part of the transition to making AI work better for us. I would certainly advocate smart use of technology to ensure that the human brain is continually energized to ensure that we remain curious and at the centre of all advancement. That is what my colleagues and I at AcuiZen are trying to do in a small way every day.
Are we being paranoid? Would love to hear your views on this subject.