AI is our biggest existential threat

AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is taking over. There’s a high likelihood that you or somebody in your family will lose their job to advanced automation in the near future. And I’m not talking about the annoying new trend that is quite prevalent in the US and UK, which is automated selfcheckout counters at the supermarket.

Anyone who has experienced these “scan-it-yourself ” systems will undoubtedly be familiar with the “unexpected item in the baggage area” alarm as you try sneak an extra avo in the basket. That’s not really AI; it’s just automation, and the reason it’s not reached our shores yet is because of South Africa’s high prevalence of AI – and by that I mean Average Intelligence, and also Associated Ignorance.

South Africans haven’t yet mastered the traffic circle, never mind checking out electronically and packing their own bags.

There are a number of industries that will be affected by AI long before Schwarzenegger has to step in and save us from extermination. If you’re in customer service, you may not be for long. By 2020, they say 85% of customer service will be powered by AI. This is probably a good thing because, currently, about 85% of customer service is powered by barely any intelligence at all.

It’s called machine learning. As robots begin to acclimatise to natural language and are able to produce friendly, cheaper and more efficient help for customers on the phone, the need for Tracy on line two fades away.

It’s hard to imagine, but so was a self-driving car a few years ago.

And that brings us to another industry that is ripe for automation: transport.

By next year, self-driving cars will be commercially available, and soon after that, automated trucking. So long sleepy truck drivers; your days are numbered.

And sales? You thought you were safe. Not so. We’ve all received those annoying pre-recorded phone calls trying to get you to buy into something, but imagine with the advances of technology, where highly specific leads are generated automatically and followed up by chatty robots.

Think you won’t be fooled by a sales robot? Last year, students studying AI at Georgia Tech IT Atlanta, US had several online teaching assistants to help them through their curriculum. What they didn’t know was that their lecturer had spent a year feeding 40 000 possible scenarios into IBM’S Watson, a fast-learning robot.

Watson was soon able to work independently of these scenarios using complex algorithms, and it took those students a very long time to figure out they were not communicating online with a human being, but a robot.

A pretty good and almost logical place for AI would be in logistics, and moreover, shipping. Automated space allocation and precise container packing and routing seems like a good place for an unwavering, particular robot who couldn’t give a damn about sleep or lunch.

But the most jaw-dropping professions where AI could be taking over are healthcare and the legal profession.

Watson, the teacher’s assistant, soon paved the way for Ross, the world’s first AI attorney, who could take all the details of your case, scan every piece of legal info out there and come back with the best line of defence – almost instantly. I’m not sure how the judge would feel about you being represented in court by R2-D2 though.

And in health care, while we’ve all been dangerously selfdiagnosing thanks to Google, thinking we had contracted some exotic disease, Ross can now scan data, DNA and other parameters to find patterns and make diagnoses, probably more accurately than your ageing family doctor.

It sounds like a daunting future for the human race. What will we be left to do other than swan about in spaceships, scoffing burgers and swiping left, much like in the Pixar movie, Wall-e. Science-fiction may not be so fictitious after all. Take a couple of spectacular minds, like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, both of whom have waded heavily into what they call the human race’s biggest existential threat.

Musk has likened ever-improving AI to “summoning the demon” and “more dangerous than nuclear weapons” and has called for urgent regulation.

Hawking speaks of singularity – “the hypothesis that the invention of artificial super-intelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilisation” – adding that human beings will have just 100 years left on the planet as AI supersedes us and finds we are no longer necessary.

Oops. I’m going to ask for the money back on my TV’S lifetime guarantee then.