People seem to be either excited or worried about the future impact of artificial
intelligence. Personally I can understand the two opposing points of view; I am
both fascinated by developments in artificial intelligence and apprehensive about
its possible negative effects.
On the one hand, the increasing intelligence of technology should bring some
obvious benefits. Machines are clearly able to do many jobs better than humans
can, especially in areas that require high levels of accuracy or calculations using
large amounts of data. For example, robots are being developed that can carry out
surgical procedures with greater precision than a human doctor, and we already
have cars that use sensors and cameras to drive themselves. Such technologies can
improve safety by reducing the likelihood of human errors. It is easy to imagine
how these developments, and many others, will steadily improve our quality of
life.
On the other hand, I share the concerns of people who believe that artificial
intelligence may harm us if we are not careful. In the short term, it is likely that we
will see a rise in unemployment as workers in various industries are replaced by
machines or software programs. For example, self-driving vehicles are expected to
cause redundancies in driving jobs, such as lorry drivers, taxi drivers and busdrivers. In the medium term, if intelligent technologies gradually take jobs away
from humans, we may find that people become deskilled and lose their sense of
purpose in life. A longer term fear is that computers become so intelligent that they
begin to make decisions without human oversight and without regard for our wellbeing.
In conclusion, while intelligent machines will no doubt improve our lives in many
ways, the potential risks of such technologies should not be ignored.