Insight: Ensuring that the future of artificial intelligence is a positive one

If you have been to the cinema in the past few months, you will know that there is a new villain in town. Foreign spies and aliens are so last decade, the new threat according to Hollywood is…artificial intelligence!

Summer blockbusters like Tom Cruise’s latest Mission Impossible film Dead Reckoning and the dazzling The Creator both have our heroes battling AI that has become too clever to be controlled by humans.

A bit more on the fantastical end of the scale, but we must also mention the chilling M3gan about an animatronic doll that achieves sentience and goes on a killing spree, a bit like a cuter version of Arnie’s Terminator from the 1984 film. Forty years ago? Now we feel old.

But why has the tide turned against AI? Wasn’t it supposed to be our great savior, doing all the repetitive work and helping us to save time so that we could do more fun stuff, like going to the cinema?

We can attribute the U-turn to a number of factors. Firstly, we had the ChatGPT launch that thrust generative AI into the public domain last year, followed by a number of similar solutions that were perhaps rushed out a bit prematurely. More recently there have been sensational stories about industry insiders breaking rank and criticizing the unregulated development of AI and the dangers it could pose.

The AI expert Geoffrey Hinton recently talked to media about how he left Google due to his fears about the dangers of advancing AI saying, “I don’t know any examples of more intelligent things being controlled by less intelligent things”.

The debate has culminated recently with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and others having a closed-door meeting with US senators where they described the “civilizational risk” that unregulated artificial intelligence poses to society.

But how much of this is actually true and how much is just hype?

Against this backdrop, our head of product Krešo Žmak was interviewed for Medium’s Authority Magazine (check out the full article here) to provide a calm and rational take on the future of AI.

In this blog we look at the highlights, and what businesses and regulators can learn about using AI effectively and safely.

Krešo makes the point that AI should not be viewed as a final solution but as a tool that can be used by product managers, data scientists, and developers to create better solutions. By taking a two-pronged approach, businesses can incorporate AI into their own processes to make teams more efficient by automating tasks like documentation creation and backlog grooming and include it in the products that they create.

He goes on to stress that the basis of any successful AI project is collaboration between engineers, data scientists, and CX professionals. Only by working together can they leverage AI to create effective and efficient solutions that acknowledge the importance of people in the whole story by incorporating their creativity and ‘humanness’ that no algorithm can replicate.     

Approaching an AI project in this way ensures that a successful outcome means tangible positive benefits for people, without them feeling locked out of the process and unable to scrutinize, evaluate, and ultimately control the role that artificial intelligence plays.   

Rather than Hollywood’s fixation with malevolent AI that tries to rise up and annihilate the human race, the most immediate and concerning threat is the potential for human replacement.

In the Medium article, Krešo makes the very valid point that by relying on AI to do a growing amount of our work will ultimately hinder innovation and cause a stagnation in our technological and intellectual progress. Rather than striving for new solutions and breakthroughs to solve humanity’s problems, there is the risk that we will just rely on machines to maintain the status quo. The terrifying result may even be a halt in humanity’s evolution.

As a species that relies exclusively on the finite resources of our planet and sun to support us, we risk long term extinction if we stop innovating and pushing technological boundaries, both at home and out into space.

So, what can be done to prevent such concerns from materializing? Do we simply ban the continued development of AI as some have suggested? We don’t believe that that is the answer. The first step is to get the balance right between AI assistance and human creativity to ensure that our ability to innovate and evolve is enhanced rather than hindered. This will require clear guidelines for educators and regulators on how we can harness the potential of AI safely and effectively. Students using ChatGPT to cheat on assignments may seem harmless, but it sets a dangerous precedent that we need to address quickly.

While some businesses and institutions may be tempted to cut short-term costs by replacing scientists, innovators, and creatives with AI alternatives, the long-term implications of this move may be disastrous. Legislation may be required to prevent this, but what is really required is widespread understanding about the positive and negative attributes of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Can we really turn our backs on the hugely positive contribution of AI towards disease identification and other medical advancements? Or the role that it will play in monitoring and mitigating the risks of climate change and resource depletion?

We believe that we shouldn’t have to if the focus of AI development is on its use as a tool to enhance and accelerate the work of scientists, engineers, and other professionals. Getting the balance right could see AI quite literally become the savior of the human race rather than cause its destruction. Hollywood will just need to find a new bogeyman to scare us with.