We are being replaced!

The inventions and innovations in technology have made our complex lives much simpler. We can now complete arduous tasks with the blink of an eye. In science fiction, new story lines have built up in which technology is portrayed as the main antagonist; tyrannizing mankind and outperforming them at almost any activity.

These instantaneous breakthroughs in artificial intelligence are leading to the creation of autonomous and semi-autonomous robots that are capable of nearly doing everything man does, potentially threatening millions of jobs around the world in the coming few years. Thus the prediction in most science fiction films might be coming true: machines may soon dominate the human race. Since Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the power of analysing and executing highly complex activities, it is obviously clear that one day we may lose total control of the technology we once built. The global economy will face a situation where more than half the world’s population will be deemed unemployable. Today, there are more than 200 million industrial robots in the US and this number continues to increase rapidly.

AI is now known to be more dangerous than nuclear weapons. There is an immediate need for societal action to keep technology a helpful servant and not let it take over as a dangerous master. We always start trusting these machines and work with them, becoming lazier, we fail to perform our responsibilities efficiently. If we rethink, we can create new jobs to gainfully substitute for what we have lost.

- The reader is a pupil of a Dubai school