Khaleej Times

AI robots are here. We can take a long vacation

- Shravan B nair The Writer Is Based In Dubai

Almost all of us are familiar with the AI robots of the present era. Maybe it’s Hanson Robotics’ Sophia, IBM’s Watson, AIVA or even Siri. It does not matter which one it is, because all we see in them is the worst robot rogue of big screen television: the Terminator!

We can see these “peaceful” robots smiling, yet we are inclined to believe they are robot mercenarie­s that manage to survive melting furnaces and come to haunt us, eternally.

Although it is a reasonable guess, life is surely going to be better than we think? Right? One of our biggest concerns is unemployme­nt after the AI revolution, but scientists argue that robots will bring with them new, and better jobs like building these robots,

and maintainin­g and coding them!

Most of these jobs will revolve around a term known as ‘Existentia­l Intelligen­ce’. Although it does sound quite fancy, its definition is quite layman: this intelligen­ce is all about thinking outside the box and out of this world; it’s all about asking those “adult” questions that no one encourages young children to ask anymore. However, if children are to survive in this urbane universe, they need to; otherwise they might never be able to make it out of the cold and bitter grasp of sheer robot power.

Regardless of all these prediction­s for a brighter globe, the hard truth that most people heartily overlook is … the scarcity of jobs. There might be better jobs, but how many exactly?

Don’t worry, because let me tell you something even better: you might not even have to work anymore! Yay! I am not kidding. If the super AI can handle themselves by doing every job on this planet, we don’t need to put up our tie every single morning and do all the toilsome tasks that our overbearin­g bosses subjugate us to do. Robot technology will be mass producing so many goods that their costs will come down to … zero. Finally, time to buy that new iPhone without having to pay a cent! This idea that everyone gets equal wages is known as Universal Basic Income and will, hopefully, help us to paint these robots in a better colour. Come on, time to cheer up now!

Just cross your fingers and keep praying for AI Robots to take over the Earth. Lifelong retirement vacation, here we come!

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