My daughter
came back from the school the other day and asked me if my father and his
father also used to work on computers. I think it was related to some activity
they were working on in the school. I explained to her what my father and my grandfather
did for a living, which by the way, was not computers. As I went further in my explanation she seemed
surprised and amazed that back in the ‘olden’ days, ‘people’ used to do things
and not computers.
I could
not get over my own thoughts even long after my daughter had stepped off once
she had found her answers. I was intrigued by the thoughts of my childhood. There
were not many devices or machines or cell phone apps to do things. Most chores
had to be done manually. The most important point, in my opinion, was that back
in the ‘olden days’ people had to ‘know’ how to ‘do’ things; unlike
today, where people have to ‘know’ how to ‘use’ things. A finance person
back then had to write up a journal, a ledger, a trial balance to get to the balance
sheet. Today all that a finance person has to do is provide raw data to a
software which throws out a balance sheet. Teachers are now ‘virtual’ and ‘online’; while signal lights, cameras and radars are the new age traffic cops. I wonder
how many bankers now actually know how to write a balance sheet or how many students
know how to write a sick leave letter or how many industrial workers know how
to work on lathes and milling machines.
Slowly
my thoughts strayed into the world of ‘Artificial intelligence’ (AI), the
supposedly next big revolution. With the advancement in the areas of machine
learning, self-healing, self - cloning-and-shut down; things are no more just programmatically
done. They are now programmatically discovered, built, advanced, cloned,
rebuilt and even destroyed. Humans are no more needed in many of the processes.
Self-driving cars and trucks are replacing human drivers while ATM’s and
teller-bots are replacing banking staff. Robots are replacing human workers in
industries, in hospitals and even in armed forces. Maybe 20 years from now,
people will have their own robots which will work on their behalf. Maybe ‘my’
robot might take my place as a programmer and program on my behalf;
while a ‘farmers’ robot might do farming on behalf of its farmer owner and a ‘lawyers’
robot might argue in the court on behalf of its lawyer owner.
The
more I thought about the possibilities of AI, the more endless that list seemed
to me. I was amused, fascinated, intrigued, and also terrified at my own
thoughts. The opportunities seemed limitless.
As I thought
through, one question came up often and has remained unanswered in my head. Assuming
that the intelligent humans will get into the task of building even powerful AI
systems, what job will an average human do, say 20 years from now? Going by the
rate of growth in the field of AI, most jobs that average humans do today,
might be done by ‘AI-Bots’ in future. So what will a regular guy like me do?
On a
lighter note -
I feel
there is 1 job which cannot be take over even by the best AI-bots. Throughout
the human history, there has almost always been 1 kind of people who have made
their presence felt in almost every culture, in almost every civilization and in
almost every country – ‘the politicians’. I think politics is one safe career
that the next generation average humans should think about until the
intelligent folks come up with something that the average folks can look into.
~Narendra
V Joshi
3 comments:
When we look back with regard to advancement of artificial intelligence it's amazing.it appears human being is not required for running this material world.However,human feelings can't be replaced.Rightly said political intelligence
When we look back with regard to advancement of artificial intelligence it's amazing.it appears human being is not required for running this material world.However,human feelings can't be replaced.Rightly said political intelligence is the one which had remained unpredictable all along.
When we look back with regard to advancement of artificial intelligence it's amazing.it appears human being is not required for running this material world.However,human feelings can't be replaced.Rightly said political intelligence is the one which had remained unpredictable all along.
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