Reflections on Artificial Intelligence, as friend or foe

Source- The post is based on the article “Reflections on Artificial Intelligence, as friend or foe” published in “The Hindu” on 16th June 2023.

Syllabus: GS3- Awareness in the fields of IT, Computers, Robotics.

Relevance- Issues related to AI

News- Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been dominating the headlines. The Association for Computing Machinery released a statement in October 2022 on ‘Principles for Responsible Algorithmic Systems’, a broader class of systems that include AI systems.

What are the areas of use for AI?

AI systems are capable of exhibiting superhuman performance on specific tasks. This is evident in the field of chess, biochemistry for protein folding.

The performance and utility of AI systems improve as the task is narrowed. It makes them valuable assistants to humans.

Speech recognition, translation, and even identifying common objects such as photographs, are just a few tasks performed by AI systems today. It even exceeds human performance in some instances.

A big moment for AI was the release of ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a generative AI tool that uses a Large Language Model to generate text. Writing could now be outsourced to it.

What are limitations of AI?

Their performance degrades on more “general” or ill-defined tasks. They are weak in integrating inferences across situations based on the common sense humans have.

What are some facts about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)?

It refers to intelligence that is not limited or narrow. Take the example of human common sense. It is absent in AI systems.

There are no credible efforts towards building AGI yet. Many experts believe AGI will never be achieved by a machine. Others believe it could be in the far future.

True AGI will be a big deal. AGI may lead to AI “machines” bettering humans in many intellectual or mental tasks.

Scenarios of super-intelligent machines enslaving humans have been imagined. AGI systems could be a superior species created by humans outside of evolution.

However, the hype and panic about LLMs or AI leading directly to human extinction are baseless.

Some experts predict that AGI may be evolved from GPT-4. AGI could emerge from a bigger LLM in the near future.

Other experts refute this. Current LLMs and their successors are not even close to AGI.

What are the possible types of dangers arising from AI?

Superhuman AI: The danger of a super intelligent AI converting humans to slaves. This is a highly unlikely scenario.

Malicious humans with powerful AI: AI tools are relatively easy to build. Even narrow AI tools can cause serious harm when matched with malicious intent.

LLMs can generate fake news. Public opinion can be manipulated to affect democratic elections. AI tools work globally. Individual malice can instantly impact the globe.

Governments may approve or support such actions against “enemies”. There is no effective defence against malicious human behaviour.

There are concerns about AI-powered “smart” weapons in the military. Unfortunately, calls for a ban are not effective in such situations.

Highly capable and inscrutable AI: AI systems will continue to improve and will be employed to assist humans. They may end up harming some sections more than others unintentionally.

These systems are created using Machine Learning from data and can perpetuate the shortcomings of the data. They may introduce asymmetric behaviours that go against certain groups.

Camera-based face recognition systems have been shown to be more accurate on fair-skinned men than on dark-skinned women.

Privacy is a critical concern. Every person can be tracked always, violating the fundamental right to privacy.

Another worry is about who develops these technologies and how. Commercial entities with huge computational, data, and human resources are the centres of action.

There is no effective public oversight. Everything that affects humans significantly needs public oversight or regulation. There is little understanding about effective regulation without stifling creativity.