Will Artificial Intelligence dominate human mind?

With Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation making forays into human domain and all spheres of both intellectual and routine activities, apprehensions being expressed on whether we have pressed the self-destruct button. Ironically, while the conception and creation of Artificial Intelligence reflects the peaks that the brain had scaled, this development also threatens to bring the intellectual capability to a plateau with reducing levels of human intervention.

We have, in fact already become enslaved to the computers and internet for access to even basic information and solutions, though the same again is by default the creation of the human brain. This may not mean that the solutions or information served on a platter in cyberspace would lead to the brain becoming redundant or losing its intellectual capability, but, such a tendency could lead to the reduction or slowing down the process of independent thinking and problem solving skills with shortcuts available at a click on the keyboard.

Sample this for example, we have become so enslaved to the computers and calculators, that even basic calculations, which otherwise could be solved with minimal effort. While this is so with basic usage, Artificial Intelligence poses a bigger challenge with some scientists and experts predicting it to be a total substitute for the human brain and actions. In fact, it has already started performing intellectual tasks in the form of robotics and automation. Again, the irony is that these tasks have been programmed by the human brain.

According to one of the most famous physicists and cosmologists of the era, Prof. Stephen Hawkins, the efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence and could spell the end of human race.” However, not many agree to his fatalistic views on Artificial Intelligence, there is substance in the contention that Artificial Intelligence can go only that far and no further, since its very nature of functioning has always to be conceived, activated and controlled by human intellect, since it is totally programmed to perform the assigned task by default.

To put it simply, artificial intelligence can solve problems based on a preset configuration. While the human brain - which encounters various situations by the day- with its innate capability to comprehend the environment and the eco system has no such limitation. But, though the fears about AI taking over human intelligence may not exactly be rational, fact that it could reduce the human race into zombies by taking over most of the tasks that we are supposed to perform, is too early to be denied.

By Satyapal Menon