Artificial Intelligence : The Sleeping Dragon

                                            If you have read my previous post related to Artificial Intelligence : Our Future , 20 Predictions For The Future and 20 Predictions For The Future Part 2 , you will see that I am having a highly positive outlook toward our future. I wrote it that way because I like to see the positive side of things all the time and then examine the negative side. There is always a negative side for everything. 

  There is a sleeping dragon behind innovations. It is important that we are aware of it and never wake him up. The dragon must not be disturbed or be in the hands of evil.  In this post, I will be diving deep down on the negative sides of artificial intelligence and our future.However I wish that the following will never happen or will be regulated.   

1. Designer Babies

Ever thought or had a discussion on what your future baby's name would be? Well I have talked to people who have already decided that their yet to be born baby will be an engineer or a doctor. I am not saying it is wrong they just want their babies to have  a great future. Occasionally I do meet some close friends who wish to have tall, strong, athletic babies and of course also the ones who wish for a blue eyed baby.   What's up with the blue eyes?

If they wish to have such and such babies then it is normal for people to wish for a designer baby. Don't you wish to be the parents of a child prodigy or a future scientist like Albert Einstein or a sport star?  There are people who wish to have designer babies and this is a niche market.   Ethically this is wrong but in the future there could be a chance where people will have access to have a baby designed according to their wish.  

What would happen when we live at a place where babies are genetically engineered to be the best? The competition will be so high that normal people will not be able achieve any of them. This may give rise to a new human breed where everyone is mentally and physically superior than rest of the human race.  This would be the end of natural birth if everyone opt for a designer baby. 

Talking about designer babies I remember the following clip from the TV series Friends. 

 

2. Simulation - World of Virtual Reality

         Virtual reality is not a new trend anymore, nowadays most people prefer to use use V.R machines for better experience. What I see is are spending more time in these experiences than they spend on responsibilities. I see a habit of procrastination growing. This is not just VR, it is also with the video games, internet surfing etc. People are just getting more isolated and spending time alone. In the long run this is not good for the mental health. (One counter argument I could give here is the world is filled with evil people so it is better, we stay indoors).
It is sad to see people just spending most of the time playing videos games. The current trend at the moment I write this article would be PUBG mobile games. It is good to relax for an hour or two in the weekends by playing with friends online but is definitely not right to play the game more than 3 hours everyday. I have played this game and I loved it and I know the reason why people are more addicted to this. I will be writing about it soon in a different article.  

By the arrival of artificial intelligence and better technology, people will be more addicted to these kind of games and spend good about of there time in the virtual world than in real world, a few am even have difficultly to come out of this beautiful dream world.

Recently in a major newspaper I read "17-YEAR-OLD COMMITS SUICIDE AFTER BEING STOPPED FROM PLAYING VIDEO GAME". I am not surprised, it will happen again in the future as games get more better and have better story. It is an addiction that should be controlled.  

Looks like the movie "The Matrix"  is getting real. Or what if we are already in a simulation?  Elon Musk in his recent interview with Joe Rogan have mentioned his concern about we living in a simulation and what we see is not real. 

3. Jobs

Imagine this you are at your job, working very hard as usual trying to meet your targets for the month. You receive an email saying that today is your final day with the company and we no longer require your service. 

You learn that you are replaced by a better machine that can outperform you in every way. And the job that you have been doing for the past 10 to 15 years is now done by machines which are more better than you. It is a very hard truth to face. You can think that I will find a different job. But what if you are 45 and no companies are willing to hire you? What if you don't know any other job or not eligible to apply for any ? I once had a colleague who said I am staying in this dead end job because I don't know what else to do. I don't know any other job and I don't have a degree. That's the moment that clicked in me that I have to educate myself else I could be replaced too. 

So is the situation of drivers. If we bring in A.I at a blink of an eye and if we replace a 45 or 50 year old driver with the robot, he will be left homeless. This can break his family and bank account. What do you think a 45 year old driver could do in the new corporate  tech world? 

4. Super humans

                             Who wants to be a superhero? Have you ever dreamed about saving peoples lives and be a super villain? I know a few guys who wants to be Darth Vader . 

What would happen if humans have access to enhance their strength, speed or have a brilliance of a genius. What will be the cause and effects if people start wanting to be more powerful than anything else in the world?  

We are humans and we are always looking for an upgrade, there will always be someone who will risk everything to achieve superpowers. With the help of A.I we are already able to control  machines with our thoughts. Machines can help us achieve the unimaginable, watch the below video of a paralyzed man walking. 

 

This is just one in hundreds of such videos. It is a great break through. Now imagine if this technology is with the wrong hands, imagine what they can build. A machine that can be used to harm or destroy humans or create a super human being by gene editing. 

Only time can show us.

5. Delete Humans

What are the chances that machines finally reaches consciousness and they can think better than humans? What if they decide that why should they follow humans commands and why do they just delete all humans from the face of the earth? 

Looks like all the man vs machine movies we watch could come alive in real life. The rest I will leave it to your own imagination. 

6. War

I want you to watch these two videos, they are not real but just imagine the thoughts that have gone through the mind of the guy who have build this video . Or if there is such a thing that can destroy an entire army in a matter of minutes. What will be the new face of war look like. If there is another world war it means people are still not ready to sit and talk to each other and make things straight. 

I just can't believe my eyes. I know these are not real but these videos are worth a watch and if someone can imagine such a thing, then it is possible. All the evil that we could do to each other.

 

7. Keep your brains shut (Thought police) 

Who is the greatest threat to any government? It is "us" . We the citizens. We talk, we think, we decide and we vote.  What if they decide to get into our thoughts and see what we think? 

They are already watching us. They they know who we are, what we like, who we talk to but the thoughts that we have in our brain is still private. What if they can access it in the future. They will know exactly what is going on in our mind and they can control us or make us vanish. It is kind of a state in the book "1984" by George Orwell. 

It may not be the government as we see today that will control us in the future. It maybe the machines that control or regulate our behavior.  

8. Terrorism

If there is a super intelligence and if it is hacked into by one of our own smart minds that wish to see the world burn, the whole artificial intelligence system can turn against us. War is not just with guns nowadays, it is also counterattacks on business and personal data. If we are bringing in artificial  intelligence into our lives we should make sure that it is impossible to hack into or keep this technology away from the reach of terrorists. 

9. Deep Fake

Have you seen these people before? You have not and you never will. These people don't exist. They are artificially created images of humans. They are not real. Hard to believe ? Visit one of this website here thispersondoesnotexist.com . These are all images created by generative adversarial network technology. 

Anything is possible now ah? People may even fall in love with one of these fake people soon. 

Want to know more ? 

It is not just images it is videos too. It is called Deep fake videos 

I bet you will love the following video. 

 

If  you wish to know how they are made and what is the technology behind it the following video will help you understand better. 

 

10. Artificial Food

Here I am talking about foods like meat,fish, rice that are made artificially at a lab that are good for consumption. It is called cultured meat. They are made in labs by vitro cell culture of animal cells, instead of from slaughtered animals. Thinking about it is good, we don't have to kill animals anymore but is it really healthy in the long term? If it is healthy then it is a win-win option. Hope it just will not be forced fed to humans who wish to have natural meat. 

Companies like future meat technologies are solving the problem producing meat artificially because natural meat production is becoming unsustainable. I am not ready to eat artificially processed food of any kind yet and I don't want to be forced to take artificial food too. Let this not be the only option for humans in the future. 

I will end this post here. I would share more at a different post.