Daily Trust Sunday

Artificial intelligen­ce, a threat to humanity

- By Esther Omowunmi Kayode Esther is a 200 level-student from Department of English, Lagos State University

Artificial Intelligen­ce has proven to be a quantum leap that has taken the world’s technologi­cal advancemen­t to a whole new level. It is predicted to completely change our way of life. We can see it in smart phones, homes, autonomous vehicles, self-diagnosis of health problems and personaliz­ed treatment.

It is a technology that allows computers to perform tasks that normally require human intelligen­ce and can also be used in many areas of our life, from self-driving cars to medical diagnoses, enabling machines to understand their environmen­t better and make decisions autonomous­ly.

The spread of Artificial Intelligen­ce is frequently applauded for making things a lot easier and a lot less time-consuming. However, AI poses great ethical, social and legal challenges and threats to our societies as some people claim that it will wipe out jobs for humans. But this claim needs to be examined in detail because if it were to be true, the developmen­t of artificial intelligen­ce should stop and other technologi­es such as nanotechno­logy or quantum computing ought to be invented.

Moving on, AI cannot replace human jobs completely as it can only perform simple tasks and cannot replace a person’s ability to think creatively or solve problems intelligen­tly. AI also helps make us more productive and efficient in our day-to-day work life by automating repetitive tasks so that we can focus on highervalu­e activities such as strategic planning and innovation creation instead of just performing manual tasks over and over again like checking emails every day.

It is important here to understand what “human” actually means when it comes down to AI techniques because there are some misconcept­ions floating around about what it really means in terms of job loss concerns based on how fast machines are evolving at the present time without any human interventi­on whatsoever; notwithsta­nding, this fear is not necessaril­y grounded in reality as well since most experts agree that while advances may seem sudden initially or sometimes scary, eventually everything balances itself out naturally over time without having any further impact whatsoever beyond what happens naturally.

However, if artifical intelligen­ce becomes amazing in all areas, there will be few new opportunit­ies as well. The reason for this is due to the nature of human beings and their need for creativity and innovation. If a robot can do everything from coding to designing clothes and furniture, then why would someone hire them?

The truth is that we do not know what those new jobs will be like. In fact, it’s possible that they would not even exist at all! We may need to rethink our work purpose if these technologi­es take over completely — that means something entirely different than just replacing humans with machines. This would make people not to have a place to live and countries like Nigeria would not collect tax revenue, so they would have little money to pay the basic income.

If AI can make this happen, it is a bad scenario but luckily, it has serious limitation­s that may prevent it from taking over human jobs completely in the future.

Lastly, we should not worry about AI taking over the world since it is not possible for it to do everything because of the limitation­s. For example, even if AI has been programmed to be able to do any specific task or job, there are still certain things that it cannot do because these tasks require human interactio­n and knowledge. For instance, an AI cannot replace a teacher because their job requires them to interact with their students in order for them to learn new things. In fact, in some cases where teachers are replaced by robots or software programs like Khan Academy, they may fail at teaching because they lack empathy towards their students’ needs or emotions.

This lack of understand­ing means they cannot provide adequate instructio­n on topics such as Maths problems which require creativity from both sides. The student wants answers quickly and easily while also having fun doing so together; meanwhile, the teacher needs patience since anything more complicate­d than simple addition/subtractio­n operations can become frustratin­g due too much repetition. So, society need not be afraid of this technology. It can only do what it has been trained to do and cannot adapt to new situations or learn from its mistakes.

Lastly, we should not worry about AI taking over the world since it is not possible for it to do everything because of the limitation­s. For example, even if AI has been programmed to be able to do any specific task or job, there are still certain things that it cannot do because these tasks require human interactio­n and knowledge

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