Today we're going to cover the top 5 myths
in AI. Welcome to 5 Mins 5 Ideas, I'm your host Samanvay.
To reach the peak of AI innovations, the majority of the population
needs to have a solid understanding of it. It's only when the people
outside of the AI industry understand AI that we'll really start seeing the true
potential of ai in changing the world around us. The
first myth about AI is that it can think for itself
just like a human brain. You might have seen many
news articles just like this. They're crafted with
sensational headlines that allude to AI advancing itself to
our detriment and because it's a software we assume that it is
much more intelligent than a human brain but it couldn't be
further from the truth. An AI thinking for itself
is very different to humans thinking for themselves.
A common technique referenced in these news articles
is reinforcement learning. Let's suppose that we
are tasked with training an algorithm how to clear the level on a platform
game. This platform game features a player and a flag at the end of the
platform which the player has to reach in order to
clear it and the only controls allowed is moving forward backward and
jumping. So it's not dissimilar to playing Mario.
So you need two algorithms for this the first one will figure out the sequence
of the controls needed to reach the flag and the second
algorithm is the reinforcement learning algorithm.
So this algorithm scores the first algorithm in its performance.
So it awards it plus one points for moving forward
minus one for moving backwards zero for jumping. So as you can see the first
algorithm will keep trying random things in order to
optimize the algorithm and maximize the score. So you can see
that the AI has no context of the game. It only knows it from
mathematical perspective which is very different to how
humans think. We tend to rely on our bias,
judgment and emotions to make decisions not just
logic. So it's gonna to be a long time till AI catches up with our
way of thinking. Fun fact AI algorithms are yet to become as intelligent
as a toddler. The second myth about AI is that it's gonna take all of our jobs
that's definitely true for jobs that require manual labor or some sort of
patent recognition such as the job of a factory worker,
cashier and even some parts of medicine on the other hand
jobs that require creativity empathy and complex
decision making are safe. This includes teachers,
social workers, ceos and economists. Now going into the future
I think that there's going to be an increasing amount of hybrid jobs which
requires the collaboration of humans and AI. So AI would take care of all of
the manual repetitive work so that humans can focus more on the creative
side of the job and this is gonna bring on
a new meaning to what work means to human beings.
The third myth about AI is that it's dangerous.
Now AI in itself is not dangerous as it's
only a tool. The danger of AI is dependent on how much of a saint
or a devil the user is. Beneficial uses of AI include predicting
cancers better than humans, helping farmers tend to their crops better
and creating new types of art. The bad uses of AI
include social manipulation for the purpose of rigging
elections and creating addictive social media apps for the purpose of generating
ad revenue. As you can see the danger of AI is completely dependent on who
uses it. So it's not dissimilar to use of medicine
by a doctor. The same medicine that can cure diseases
can also result in death if it's not used the right way.
The fourth myth about AI is that it's 100 percent
objective. Given that AI is a software you'd naturally assume that it's
rational and just unlike emotionally charged
human beings who make decisions based on bias and
prejudice. Now the performance of an AI algorithm
is strongly tied to what kind of data it's trained on. So naturally the data
fed to AI algorithms is tainted with human biases
which includes gender and racial biases. So the AI algorithms replicates the
behavior of humans instead of being superior. So there's
leaps and bounds to be made before AI can truly become
100% objective. The final myth about AI is
that it's complicated. The underlying mathematical principles
behind AI algorithms can be quite daunting to
anyone, especially those from a non-STEM
background and AI can also seem very guarded given
the number of big tech companies that engage in it and also the number of
researchers in the field but python packages such as
sklearn, tensorflow and pytorch readily abstract away the mathematical
complexity to allow you to use AI algorithms in just a couple of lines
of code so if you've got a problem to solve and you think
AI can help you definitely go ahead and try these software tools.
Don't let your lack of knowledge in maths hold you back because as you start
engaging in it you'll start learning the underlying principles
by default and you don't really need to know it 100%
to make effective and impactful use of the technology. Hopefully you learnt
something new today to help you understand AI a bit better. If you
enjoyed the video, don't forget to like, comment and subscribe and I'll see you
next time.