Dark Side of Artificial Intelligence

Delhi: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already moved into many facets of our daily lives; in banks, in CCTV cameras on the street, conversational AI, flying drones, chatbots, language translators, facial recognition, and social media.

Col Inderjeet says, " We are all surrounded by a variety of new AI devices. We have become accustomed to sharing our reality with intelligence simulations. By means of smart algorithms, machines today are capable of doing incredible things with facial and speech recognition. With error rates of under-five percent, many systems can perform better than humans.

Image recognition is used in various social networking platforms or in self-driving cars and one can perhaps say to an extent that computers are now far superior to humans. E-commerce platforms and online retailers or search engines use Machine Learning (ML) to optimize the user experience (UX) and to create buying recommendations. In short, AI and ML largely accepted – components of our day to day lives.

Artificial intelligence today is known as Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI or weak AI), that it is designed to perform a narrow task (e.g. only facial recognition or only internet searches or only driving a car). However, the long-term goal of many researchers is to create Artificial General Intelligence (AGI or strong AI). Most of the AI-led innovations today fall under the bracket of Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI).

Face recognition technology Photos app and various online games, are all perfect examples of ANI – a result of brute force statistics, made possible by the quantity of data fed into the models, and trained on a huge, specific dataset to accomplish one task. While narrow AI may outperform humans at whatever its specific task is, like playing games or solving equations, AGI would outperform humans at nearly every cognitive task.

Everyday use of AI falls within the category of Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) which works only in a pre-defined range or on one task. What we see right now in the world is broadly known as Narrow AI, which helps in making better predictions, developing a chat interface to understand customers better, and helps in making data-driven decisions.

Col Inderjeet continues to add, "Artificial intelligence (AI) dubbed the "new electricity" – as electricity changed how the world operated. It upended transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, health care. Similarly, AI is poised to have a similar impact spanning from Information technology, web search, and advertising. These are already being powered by Artificial Intelligence. Today algorithms decide whether we’re approved for a bank loan. It helps us order food items and estimate our wait time, and even tells the driver where to deliver it. Other areas ripe for AI impact are Fintech, Logistics, Health Care, Security, and Supply chain."

Artificial Intelligence is transforming the ways we work, learn, and play, however, it has a dark side. Take the case of taxi fares. These taxi fares are set by AI algorithms or, more accurately, machine learning algorithms. For each ride, fare takes into account not only the travel time to the destination and distance but also the demand at the relevant time and area. For instance, if you are traveling from a wealthy neighborhood, your fare is likely to be higher than another person traveling from a poorer part of the city because the computer "knows" you can afford it. Paying a few extra rupees for a ride is one thing, but AI is also being used to make decisions in areas, which have serious impacts on people's lives.

Some ill-fated initiatives revealed the dark side of Artificial Intelligence when certain AI-based devices spooked users by randomly laughing aloud at unrelated commands. In other cases, the devices randomly played music very loudly in an empty house in Germany when the user wasn’t even at home. This prompted neighbors to call the cops to end the “party”. Similarly, Robot Sophia was part of a conversation that fueled the worries of skeptics such as Stephen Hawking. During an interview by its founder, Sophia once expressed its desire to destroy humans while also arguing about robots having more rights than humans.

Some of the more concerning developments in Artificial Intelligence are in the field of surveillance. China is beginning to introduce a social credit system where citizens lose points for misdemeanours like buying alcohol or getting traffic tickets. Buying an item like a diaper indicates social responsibility, which leads to a higher social credit rating. Advocates of the system say that it promotes public safety and improves behavior. However, it involves an intrusion of privacy and the risk of data theft as well as the curtailment of personal freedom, which is unacceptable in the cultures of most western countries.

COl. Inderjeet further explains, "While the benefits of such AI systems cannot be denied, automated decision-making suffers from two serious problems. The first problem is non-transparency. AI system designers do not disclose what input data Artificial Intelligence relies on, and which learning algorithms it uses. The second problem with automated decision-making goes deeper into how AI works."

Today, many advanced AI applications use "neural networks", a type of machine learning algorithm based on the structure of human brains. While a neural network can produce accurate results, the way it does so is often impractical or impossible to be explained in human logic. This is commonly referred to as the "black box" problem.

Risks pertaining to Artificial Intelligence can be classified into two principal risks categories: one, there are risks connected with society and humans, and second, there is a risk of dependence on technology. Many of us are concerned about Artificial Intelligence taking over human activities and leading to existential issues. This is not just about apocalyptic fears and Terminator-like scenarios, which have been cited repeatedly by Tesla founder Elon Musk, but about more elementary, existential fears. People have started asking themselves questions such as - How would I fit into the digital future when intelligent robots take over my job? Do I still have the right skills? The older generation especially is very skeptical about technological development and the increasing use of artificial intelligence.

Organizations that use AI are subject to three types of risks. Security risks are rising as AI becomes more prevalent and embedded in critical enterprise operations. Liability risks are increasing as decisions affecting customers are increasingly driven by AI models using sensitive customer data. Social risks are increasing as “irresponsible AI” causes adverse and unfair consequences for consumers by making biased decisions that are neither transparent nor readily understood.

Many of the world’s leading scientific thinkers – Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Tim Berners-Lee, and the late Stephen Hawking – all worry that an AI will regard us as annoying bugs. AI technologies could result in innovative types of cybercrimes and political distress.

Notwithstanding Artificial Intelligence is a phenomenal technology. There is no dark side to AI, but there is definitely a dark side to humans and just like any tool, AI can be used to serve evil human needs.

You can follow Col. Inderjeet on twitter @inderbarara, insta:inderbarar