Artificial Intelligence – AI
MY cousin Chanda Mulenga from the village was visiting me for the first time and on seeing traffic lights (so-called robots) he was amazed and insisted on watching the spectacle of traffic control, in the process I lost a good 30 minutes of my valuable time.
Traffic lights or robots are one of the early inventions in artificial intelligence. A robot (not necessarily traffic lights) is defined as a machine real or imaginary that is controlled by a computer and often made to look and feel human or animal.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in broad terms is defined as intelligence exhibited by machines. Computer science further researches AI and its “intelligence agents” being defined as devices that are “aware” of their environment and take full advantage to achieve maximum goals.
These are machines that mimic cognitive functions that are associated with human minds such as learning, speech and problem solving. The question is; which machines really qualify to be defined as being intelligence agents?
Capabilities currently classified as AI include successfully understanding human speech, competing at high-level strategic games such as Chess and Go, self-driven cars and interpretation of complex data, decision making and language translation.
The field of AI draws upon computer science, methods based on probability, economics, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience and artificial psychology.
Some people consider AI as a danger to humanity as it progresses unabatedly. In the twenty-first century AI both hard and soft have experienced a resurgent following the concurrent advances in computer power and hence a lot of functions can be performed in real time.
Like traffic lights, robots with human looks have been with us since 1950 in factories and now have moved outside in service industry from serving of food and drinks, making of burgers and pizzas faster than humans can, including cleaning up and washing of dishes. They further go on to take up delivery jobs from driverless cars to drones etc.
Modern day bricklaying robots can lay as many as 1, 000 bricks per hour therefore capable of build a medium-cost house in two days something that would take a set of dedicated human team anything up to six weeks to build.
The question is “what type of human jobs are likely to be taken over by robots?” This is not an easy question to answer taking into consideration the rapid pace at which tiny and faster computer processors are being developed, but it’s fair to say that it’s those jobs that are of a repetitive nature, jobs that humans sometimes say they can perform “with their eyes closed” such as data entry and assembly line jobs in factories just to give two of the numerous examples.
Mining and agricultural industries have not been spared either. These industries are being transformed at a rapid pace with mechanisation.
Research results abound about AI and in particular robots creating mass unemployment within a couple of decades. One such study forecasts that 47 percent of all jobs in the USA would be computerised within the next 20 years.
Such jobs are based on repetitiveness and social interactions. This is a grave concern indeed but what is the solution?
The answer is perhaps none, the best solution would be perhaps to “compromise” with these “occupiers” i.e. work with robots and share certain functions and aspects of work.
In other words avoid “total automation.” Robots may be used to replace or assist certain portions of a job rather than replacing it all together.
The smart phone has been with us for just over ten years now (appears a long time ago now) from the iPhone, the Blackberry to the present mass market leader Samsung.
Automated homes and green homes are already here with us. Home functions such as temperature control, security systems, CCTV’s can be controlled remotely using your laptop or smart phone.
My gardener Chimangeni Phiri heard a rumour that I will soon be buying an automated lawn mower and install an automated irrigation system so he came pleading with me that I shouldn’t go ahead with my plans; he doesn’t want aliens to take over his job.
I assured him that would not be the case. He named his first born son, Robot Intelligent Phiri.
*Eng. Julius Kazembe-Lungu is Technical Director, JKL-Associates.
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