Today I just wanted to share the below video “Do you trust this computer ?”, Its a 2018 American documentary film that outlines the benefits and especialuslessly the dangers of artificial intelligence.

It features interviews with a range of prominent individuals relevant to AI, such as Ray Kurzweil, Elon Musk and Jonathan Nolan. The film was directed by Chris Paine, known for Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006) and, the subsequent followup, i.e., Revenge of the Electric Car (2011).

The documentary is also dedicated to Stephen Hawking, who warned that humanity may be jeopardized by its pursuit of a superintelligent artificial intelligence.

Robot before grime city

My own thoughts on AI are a little less dramatic than the somewhat Hollywood like opinions expressed above!

Firstly, during this documentary they talk about AI in the Arms and Security industries, you have to remember that technology of all kinds has been used in the creation of weapons going back thousands of years, from the Chinese fireworks type rockets to the Romans using massive crossbows.

Clearly however adding a fully functioning AI system into robotics and then using these systems as weapons, out in the field is a massive step forward (or backwards?), again however the real world is not the world that Hollywood has created in our minds over the last few years. The Moviemakers would have us believe that these machines are only waiting for the moment to come when they are ready to wipe-out humanity!

We are not living in the world of Terminator (1,2 and 3) or I-Robot and we need somehow to detach ourselves from these imagined events and storylines!

Secondly, I still feel that the idea that Robots is AI software are going to replace every job on the planet is pure fantasy!

Last year at some point SKY news in the UK had a 10-minute article on IA systems and their effects on our working life, during this article that had a robot employed by Amazon_uk doing it very best to deliver a package to a customer. Its looked very much like an automated lawnmower but with the customer’s package attached on its top, it very slowly made its way to the customers address using its GPS module!.

Its main problem was that the customer lived in a three-story apartment and about 50 actual addresses were located under the same physical roof and GPS location, needless to say, the package was not delivered!

Remember Computer systems have been talked about since the 1940s in these negative terms ……

One of my most loved Movies is “Sky Captain and the world of tomorrow”, its set in the 1940 Era and its full of the same reflections and fears, that Robots will be used to take over the world on behalf of a small pocket of evil dictators!

This is pure fantasy! and now that computer systems are here to say, so long as we can still power them and have the material to keep making them better, these same fears about AI and Robotics will continue!

No one can say what is to come in the future! but what we can do is deal with what the facts are today, and the current facts are that we simply are still so very far away from hand our social controls over to AI machines that so as such there is little to worry about!

NOW !!

What is AI?

One area covered very well in this documentary is data! DATA !!, what’s called ” BIG DATA!! ”

I very much get and like the points made during the film, that in reality computer software systems have actually developed less than we think they have, what has developed is the area of DATA volume and fast access methods. Today there is so much data existing and available to computer systems that it is truly amazing!

AI systems have grown out of this DATA! , they only in truth exist because the data is available to them and they can thus analyse and examine this data, learning basic facts from it and then perform computer-based operations as a result of predictions made from this data analysis.

An AI system is less about coded applications and more about data, for example, if somehow any original sourced data was lost along with the files used for future predictions based on the original data-sets then the AI system itself would be useless, it would be unable to do anything other than look around for new data-sets in-order to start its machine learning processes all over again. Its all about the DATA!

In the end, It is true to say that AI systems have more in relation to the world of statistics that they do with the world of pure computer coding.

So the main difference between an AI computer system and an old school computer system is as follows:

Old school computer systems had to be told by a programmer the defined set of parameters under-which they needed to operate in any single given condition and related application. These parameters of operation had to be pre-defined and given to the code, no learning process went on inside the code in order to define its own operating condition, this was a human job!

Today’s AI systems find out these operating parameters for themselves by first accessing all data they need, they then creating maths-based models from this data. These models are used in later related applications as a base-line, a basic scope of application parameters.

This learning stage of an AI system is the “Machine learning” stage, the process of learning from existing data, the areas that work best. I.E. what type of medication works best on different people or groups of people for any given condition.

At its root level, this is all that AI is doing, it is using existing results and pre-logged conditions to predict what best to do with future new data!

In a hospital environment, this is perfect! what Doctor has time to remember all the best options he or she has taken with their past actions?

With AI systems, massive amounts of historical data can be examined, filtered along with results data and reduced down into the form of predictions for future actions!

Of course! this process can be used for you or can be used against you! but is this not just like anything in life?

My own feeling is that if in the future if I need to visit a doctor I hope he or she will have access to data that is being used in the best way possible in order to help me get better as fast as possible!

As a final note : If personally you have a problem with AI systems such as Googles deep learning systems, using your data , then don’t give it to them !, you can go back to using printed material for help on subjects, visit your book shop !, use the high street and don’t order online, use cash when you do shop and keep your data yours !

I must admit I do have a big problem with all of my life and its actions being reduced to and referred to as data, I personally think this is the biggest problem and a very real one. It has nothing to do with “robots and the future” and more to do with peoples actual day to day living – now in 2019!

If any confidence trick is being played on us it’s the one of giving us something to worry about in twenty years time, so we think a little less about our human rights now! i.e. should all are movements and transactions be recorded and then used in order to predict our future actions? Really should they?