{"id":2097,"date":"2019-11-27T02:01:59","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T02:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kusuaks7\/?p=1702"},"modified":"2024-02-20T16:33:16","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T16:33:16","slug":"how-artificial-intelligence-is-forcing-us-to-answer-some-very-human-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/ai-ml\/how-artificial-intelligence-is-forcing-us-to-answer-some-very-human-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"How Artificial Intelligence Is Forcing Us To Answer Some Very Human Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Dixon, who invested early in companies ranging from Warby Parker to Kickstarter, once wrote that the\u00a0next big thing always starts out looking like a toy<\/a>. That\u2019s certainly true of artificial intelligence, which started out playing games like chess, go and playing humans on the game show Jeopardy!\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tYet today, AI has become so pervasive we often don\u2019t even recognize it anymore. Besides enabling us to speak to our phones and get answers back, intelligent algorithms are often working in the background, providing things like predictive maintenance for machinery and automating basic software tasks.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAs the technology becomes more powerful, it\u2019s also forcing us to ask some uncomfortable questions that were once more in the realm of science fiction or late-night dorm room discussions. When machines start doing things traditionally considered to be uniquely human, we need to reevaluate what it means to be human and what is to be a machine.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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What Is Original And Creative?<\/strong><\/h3><\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThere is an old literary concept called the\u00a0Infinite Monkey Theorem<\/a>. The basic idea is that if you had an infinite amount of monkeys pecking away an infinite amount of keyboards, they would, in time, produce the complete works of Shakespeare or Tolstoy or any other literary masterpiece.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tToday, our technology is powerful enough to simulate infinite monkeys and produce something that looks a whole lot like original work. Music scholar and composer\u00a0David Cope<\/a>\u00a0has been able to create\u00a0algorithms that produce original works of music<\/a>\u00a0which are so good that even experts can\u2019t tell the difference. Companies like\u00a0Narrative Science<\/a>\u00a0are able to produce coherent documents from raw data this way.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSo there\u2019s an interesting philosophical discussion to be had about what what qualifies as true creation and what\u2019s merely curation. If an algorithm produces War and Peace randomly, does it retain the same meaning? Or is the intent of the author a crucial component of what creativity is about? Reasonable people can disagree.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHowever, as AI technology becomes more common and pervasive, some very practical issues are arising. For example, Amazon\u2019s Audible unit has created a new captions feature for audio books.\u00a0Publishers are suing<\/a>, saying it\u2019s a violation of copyright, but Amazon claims that because the captions are created with artificial intelligence, it is essentially a new work.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhen machines can create does that qualify as an original, creative intent? Under what circumstances can a work be considered new and original? We are going to have to decide.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Bias And Transparency<\/strong><\/h3><\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWe generally accept that humans have biases. In fact, Wikipedia\u00a0lists over 100 documented biases<\/a>\u00a0that affect our judgments. Marketers and salespeople try to exploit these biases to influence our decisions. At the same time, professional training is supposed to mitigate them. To make good decisions, we need to conquer our tendency for bias.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\nYet however much we strive to minimize bias, we cannot eliminate it, which is why transparency is so crucial for any system to work. When a CEO is hired to run a corporation, for example, he or she can\u2019t just make decisions willy nilly, but is held accountable to a board of directors who represent shareholders. Records are kept and audited to ensure transparency.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMachines\u00a0also have biases<\/a>\u00a0which are just as pervasive and difficult to root out.\u00a0Amazon recently had to scrap<\/a>\u00a0an AI system that analyzed resumes because it was biased against female candidates. Google\u2019s algorithm designed to detect hate speech\u00a0was found to be racially biased<\/a>. If two of the most sophisticated firms on the planet are unable to eliminate bias, what hope is there for the rest of us?\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSo we need to start asking the same questions of machine-based decisions as we do of human ones. What information was used to make a decision? On what basis was a judgment made? How much oversight should be required and by whom? We all worry about who and what are influencing our children, we need to ask the same questions about our algorithms.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The Problem Of Moral Agency<\/strong><\/h3><\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFor centuries, philosophers have debated the issue of what constitutes a\u00a0moral agent<\/a>, meaning to what extent someone is able to make and be held responsible for moral judgments. For example, we generally do not consider those who are insane to be moral agents. Minors under the age of eighteen are also not fully held responsible for their actions.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tYet sometimes the issue of moral agency isn\u2019t so clear. Consider a moral dilemma known as the\u00a0\u00a0trolley problem<\/a>. Imagine you see a trolley barreling down the tracks that is about to run over five people. The only way to save them is to pull a lever to switch the trolley to a different set of tracks, but if you do one person standing there will be killed. What should you do?\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFor the most part, the trolley problem has been a subject for freshman philosophy classes and\u00a0avant garde<\/em>\u00a0cocktail parties, without any real bearing on actual decisions. However, with the rise of technologies like self-driving cars, decisions such as whether to protect the life of a passenger or a pedestrian will need to be explicitly encoded into the systems we create.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOn a more basic level, we need to ask who is responsible for a decision an algorithm makes, especially since AI systems are\u00a0increasingly capable of making judgments humans can\u2019t understand<\/a>. Who is culpable for an algorithmically driven decision gone bad? By what standard should they be evaluated?\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Working Towards Human-Machine Coevolution<\/strong><\/h3><\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBefore the industrial revolution, most people earned their living through physical labor. Much like today, tradesman saw mechanization as a threat \u2014 and indeed it was. There\u2019s not much work for blacksmiths or loom weavers these days. What wasn\u2019t clear at the time was that industrialization would create a\u00a0knowledge economy<\/a>\u00a0and demand for higher paid cognitive work.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tToday, we\u2019re going through a similar shift, but now machines are taking over cognitive tasks. Just as the industrial revolution devalued certain skills and increased the value of others, the age of thinking machines is catalyzing a shift from\u00a0cognitive skills to social skills<\/a>. The future will be driven by humans collaborating with other humans to design work for machines that creates value for other humans.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTechnology is, as Marshal McLuhan pointed out long ago, an extension of man. We are constantly coevolving with our creations. Value never really disappears,\u00a0it just shifts to another place<\/a>. So when we use technology to automate a particular task, humans must find a way to create value elsewhere, which creates an opportunity to create new technologies.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThis is how humans and machines coevolve. The dilemma that confronts us now is that when machines replace tasks that were once thought of as innately human, we must redefine ourselves and that raises thorny questions about our relationship to the moral universe. When men become gods, the only thing that remains to conquer is ourselves.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AI has become so pervasive we often don’t even recognize it anymore. Besides enabling us to speak to our phones and get answers back, intelligent algorithms are often working in the background, providing things like predictive maintenance for machinery and automating basic software tasks. As the technology becomes more powerful, it’s also forcing us to ask some uncomfortable questions that were once more in the realm of science fiction or late-night dorm room discussions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":622,"featured_media":2881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[97],"ppma_author":[3337],"class_list":["post-2097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-ml","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"authors":[{"term_id":3337,"user_id":622,"is_guest":0,"slug":"greg-satell","display_name":"Greg Satell","avatar_url":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/medium_09100e21-0736-4ca7-ac55-7140c8c4d9d2-150x150.jpg","user_url":"https:\/\/www.gregsatell.com\/%20","last_name":"Satell","first_name":"Greg","job_title":"","description":"Greg Satell is an international keynote speaker, adviser and bestselling author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change. His previous effort, Mapping Innovation, was selected as one of the best business books of 2017. You can learn more about Greg on his website, GregSatell.com<\/a> and follow him on Twitter<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/622"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2097"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36059,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097\/revisions\/36059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2097"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}