Is AI making humans lazy?
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND HUMANS WILL HAVE A SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP, SAY EXPERTS
Today, artificial intelligence (AI) can be seen in our everyday lives — from cars to household items and even in classroom learning. It is clear that, since the arrival of AI, the way we’ve lived our lives has changed, considering it provides us with fast answers to problems we don’t have to memorise or solve ourselves anymore. The question is: does the ease that AI gives humans, also make us lazier? Is it making people use less brain power, causing us to be too dependent on technology?
AI expert Peer Mohaideen Sait, founder and CEO of Black Cube Solutions, believes AI can make us “lazy”, but that only depends on how each individual is using AI. “Data is data. How you choose to see that data and use it still requires human choice. It is about how you innovate with it. Human interaction still remains where AI is concerned. But what it does is it gives you an alternative option,” he said.
“Does it make us think less? Well yes, it can make us lazy; but again, that is down to the person. If used correctly, it is very useful. It is helping propel so many industries forward, for instance the healthcare industry. Today, healthcare professionals can visualise things through AI, like complicated surgeries. This was impossible before.
“Does it make us think less? Well yes, it can make us lazy, but again, that is down to the person. If used correctly it is very useful. It is helping propel so many industries forward, for instance the healthcare industry. Today, healthcare professionals can visualise things through AI, like complicated surgeries. They never could before.
So AI doesn’t just help lives “it is great for learning and development. You can use it to aid you in decision making. It’s about using it when it is needed, not for the sake of it.”
Raphael Nolden, the founder of Amy — an AI tutor for students — is more optimistic about its rapid adoption. He believes that even though AI will take over many roles occupied by humans today, we will continue to innovate.
“Our lives and society will change and we will do things we can’t even imagine today. AI will take over many aspects of the work we currently do, but we will have a symbiotic relationship with it. AI will do the mundane, repetitive things we don’t enjoy and this will allow us to spend more of our time on the interesting, more human parts of our work,” Nolden said.
“This will completely redefine many jobs, but not remove them completely. Let’s take a teacher as an example. At the moment, teachers spend a lot of time doing tasks they don’t like, such as marking and reporting. AI will take care of all this and give them more time to do the human aspects of their job like creating amazing classes, inspiring their students and guiding them through life as they grow up.”
Sait said that a wider adaption of AI will give humans an opportunity to grow other parts of their brain, while AI solves problems that we don’t have to. “Another concern is that our brains will start to waste away. At school, we spent a lot of time memorising information. Now we have more information in just our pockets, so we we can learn not to solve real, mundane problems and develop other parts of our brain instead.
“As technology takes care of the simple tasks, our brains will develop their higher functions and humans will continue to progress and take on new challenges which can only solved with the help of AI. Meanwhile, our creativity will ensure that we invent thousands of new jobs so we won’t get a chance to get lazy.”