Spielberg’s classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, introduced the general public to the concept of Artificial Intelligence and the dilemma of its useToday we are all surrounded by AI, from our smartphones’ Voice Assistants to our surveillance cameras, Self-Driving cars and now even our homes with Alexa and Google, Artificial Intelligence or AI as Gen-Z would call it has made its way into our lives in a manner that seems irreplaceable. Despite its pivotal role in our day-to-day lives, only a few know what artificial intelligence is, and what its pros and cons are. Do you know what all this fuss about AI is and the Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence There are no worries pal, today’s blog will answer such questions and more.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
The Idea of Artificial Intelligence dates back up to 2700 years before, do you believe that?
Today’s Artificial Intelligence however isn’t remotely close to what was the idea in the Dark Ages. The refined and currently acknowledged definition of Artificial Intelligence was coined back in 1956 by James McCarthy, the father of AI. At its core Artificial Intelligence is a set of technologies enabling computers to perform advanced functions by mimicking human intelligence.
AI, isn’t very intelligent, because for it to be nearly accurate you need to feed it data, a whole lot of data. Whatever Artificial Intelligence services we are using these days can be broadly categorized into two;
Narrow AI vs. General AI: Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence
Narrow or Weak AI: This type of AI deals with specific tasks and is designed only to deal with them, such as Facial Recognition, Fingerprint Scanning, and Voice Assistants.
General or Strong AI: The other side of the coin is Strong AI which is an advanced form of AI that aims to perform intellectual tasks that only humans could do up until now. The Robot Sophia is a specimen of such AI, other than that it is still a far-fetched concept.
Where is Artificial Intelligence used?
In the last few years, AI has seen a new revolution with the introduction of models such as Midjourney, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Co-pilot. OpenAI became the fastest app to register a million users, in a mere 5 days. And with the growing popularity of all these models we are back to square one, is AI good or Bad?
AI is widely used across industries, from healthcare, banking, and the automotive industry to finance, and has the potential to revolutionize how we live and work. A study suggests a minimum of 120% increase in the use of AI in the next year. However, it also raises ethical and societal questions about its impact on jobs, privacy, and decision-making. So let’s dig deep and weigh both sides of the argument to get a clear picture.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence
Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence
AI is projected to contribute about $15.7 Trillion to the Global economy by 2030. There are numerous pros of Artificial intelligence in our world, but we’ll try to cover the top 5 benefits of Artificial intelligence.
Never gets tired
Possibly one of the biggest human weaknesses is that we get tired, an average human can’t work more than a couple of hours consistently, on the other hand, your trusted AI system will work almost continually forever.
This is one of the biggest benefits
- They don’t sleep
- Eat food
- Take breaks unless there’s a maintenance check.
This 24/7 availability is a strong argument for why we need Artificial Intelligence.
Example: You can ask ChatGpt questions all day long, a normal human won’t listen to more than 2.
Minimizes Human Error Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence
Humans are easily the most skilled beings but even they commit errors sometimes elementary ones, however, an AI model if programmed properly tends to make little to no mistakes, which is a real blessing. The acceptable mean error rate for an AI model is 6.8%, which is almost half in comparison to a human. But there is one very important consideration: AI Systems depend on human minds for their programming and creation, so they have limitations and flaws.
Example: AI-enhanced driving Safety features in cars
Unbiased Results
A group of the World’s finest recruiters would mostly not settle on the same candidates all the time, though, an AI model will always give an unbiased result, based on previous successful results. AI systems make predictions based on patterns, not assumptions, which I believe is one of many benefits of Artificial intelligence which is why about 56% of corporations in the USA are using AI to perfect business operations.
Humans have biases and differences of opinion, whereas, an AI model is trained specifically to negate any external inclination and only act per available dataset and precedence, which makes it one of the advantages of Artificial Intelligence.
Example: Screening Resumes
Pros and Cons of AI in Healthcare
AI has brought so many revolutionary changes in the healthcare sector, from early cancer detection using pattern matching to forming personalized treatment techniques for each patient Artificial Intelligence has made things better for all. Back in 2021, 41% of healthcare units were using AI tools in the US, a number that has only gone up since.
AI is also helping streamline Healthcare records for Government associations and helping them make better & more focused healthcare plans for each region, which I believe is one of the many benefits of AI in healthcare.
Example: Breast Cancer Detection and classification using CT-Scan images.
Less Risky Tasks for Humans
Undoubtedly one of the biggest pros of Artificial Intelligence is its ability to replace or aid in risky tasks. In multiple manufacturing sectors, humans encounter lots of heavy or hazardous machinery and equipment but AI-powered machines have taken place for humans and made sure we are safe.
The paint job is one such hazardous job that has caused breathing and skin issues for factory workers but ever since we got AI-powered robots all a human does is click a button and the car gets a paint coat.
Example: Paint Robots in Volkswagen.
Best Assistant
Did you know ChatGPT’s website gets over 1.6 billion visits each month?
AI chatbots have changed the whole digital game, now you can communicate with a bot on an E-commerce store and it will help you answer your questions instantly based on previous responses, making the process a lot smoother & efficient. AI tools also help you increase work productivity by keeping constant track of your work routine and finding the times when you are most productive and then help you route important tasks in those times. This is one of the most pivotal pros of Artificial Intelligence.
Example: Chatbots, Work Productivity Solutions apps.
Excels with Large sets of Data
Almost every government office has a very big room specifically kept to hold files and data, which explains the reason why it takes so long to process things at times. However, unlike humans, AI excels with bulk data and will help you organize and sort such big and ever-growing datasets in the blink of an eye. AI helps process and analyze large datasets much quicker than methods of Old age, I mean the 2000s and helps us find accurate and suitable results all the time, every time.
Example: Finding patterns for trials of similar precedence, aiding the judicial process.
Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence
A famous saying goes like ‘There’s always a flip side to the coin’ and it couldn’t have been said any better when it comes to AI. Despite its overpowering benefits, the Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence are also glaringly apparent and some are as follows.
Threat to Employment: Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence Job Displacement
In the last few years, AI’s rise has caused substantial downsizing for non-technical jobs. Multiple professions have become rather redundant because the tasks they were employed to AI can do it in a much quicker and efficient manner.
Professions such as Research Analyst and Copywriter will soon become nonexistent which is undeniably one of the disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence. According to a study by BBC AI will replace approximately 300 million people in the next two decades. While it’s true that Calculator cannot replace Mathematicians it sure did replace Abacuses. So, humans will have to evolve in their role alongside AI.
Absence of Creative Ability
One of the biggest cons of AI as highlighted by its critics is the lack of Artificial intelligence to produce something original. Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence are restricted to operating within the provided datasets and will mostly merge a couple of things from here and there and produce something incredible, but not creative or original.
Pros and Cons of the Artificial Intelligence Model can produce:
- outstanding music,
- Write great scripts
- Mimic the voice of any Celebrity
but all that is made possible by the relevant dataset, and it cannot go beyond that, it cannot think outside the box. AI can paint beautiful digital art but it will never produce its ’Mona Lisa’.
Lacks Emotional Aspect
Another disadvantage of Artificial Intelligence tools is the fact that they lack a degree of humanness in their predictions. AI will only see through the Facts and figures and although it can be programmed to locate a few emotional cues it cannot distinguish complex human emotions.
There are a lot of sectors that require genuine empathy and consideration of human emotions to make predictions and results but AI’s lack of emotional sensitivity makes it hard for AI to deal with such situations. This is primarily a reason why we’ll always need humans to make critical decisions because only we can factor in such reasoning.
Privacy and Data Security Concerns
In today’s world, the biggest problem is the privacy of one’s data, massive conglomerates are put on trial for data collection, storage, and analysis for their gains, an issue similar to the AI model.
If you need your AI to make personalized plans and predictions you will need to give it your sensitive information which undeniably puts you in danger of cyber attacks and seepage of your sensitive information.
Ethical Dilemmas: Navigating the Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence Moral Implications
With an increase in the autonomy of AI Systems, we are entrusting them with making informed decisions, something that can be a bit problematic. A fully-autonomous driven car errs and gets into an accident who is to be blamed, the car manufacturer, the driver, or both? If an AI model prescribes a specific medical procedure and it leads to further complications, who will take responsibility for that? These are some of the questions that make widespread implementation of AI a hassle.
Another ethical implication of AI is the fact that it’s making humans lazy, less proactive and slowly killing the curiosity inside of us. A few years back when you didn’t know the answer to a question you’d study relevant research papers and books to get full information on the matter, now you do ChatGPT and that’s that.
Makes Humans too dependent
In the past couple of years, every student, developer, and business professional’s best friend and advisor has been a chatbot, an AI virtual assistant. We are so dependent on AI to help us solve our college assignments, help us locate and resolve bugs that it’s impossible to now imagine a world without it.
Chat-GPT received over 10 million queries per day during the first week of its launch. This dependence on AI systems is the new pandemic and only a handful are talking about it which is why it’s one of the biggest disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence.
Conclusion
It is too early to give a final verdict on whether AI is a villain and destroyer of the world or a saviour we’ve longed for forever, but one thing is obvious AI’s influence is becoming too deep-rooted in our day-to-day life. I think with AI we are once again in a very typical situation, where we need to be reminded that no matter who is strong, pen or the sword, the beholder is always the strongest. At the end of the day, the pros and cons of Artificial intelligence will remain but with strict regulation and Quality checks, we can always find a way where the advantages overpower the disadvantages.
