Artificial Intelligence: Big claims and disturbing questions

AI can perform complex tasks without high costs, without paying salaries to professionals and/or other individuals

YouTube is flooded now with videos made using artificial intelligence.There are music videos of world leaders singing or playing instruments, with other presidents and prime ministers in the audience.One video shows Russian President Vladimir Putin playing a guitar and singing  a 90s American pop hit as world leaders such as Donald Trump and Narendra Modi sit in the audience, laughing and cheering.  I noticed that the lip synch was sometimes out, but it looked very convincing.

Another showed Donald Trump and Kim Jong Il sitting together and playing a traditional string instrument, again very convincing. All this may look like good fun, and this artificial intelligence ‘make believe’ world isn’t just limited to music.

Fake vs authentic 

In a FaceBook site dedicated to Soviet era images, there was a recent post showing two girls working at the Volga car factory. But comments were sharply divided between those claiming it to be an AI generated fake and others saying it’s authentic. 

Those claiming it was a fake said the two girls looked similar (which they did), and also that their ID badges were from another Soviet car maker, not Volga. But those claiming it was an authentic image gave the name of the photographer, supporting claims of authenticity.

Another site dedicated to Sir Richard Attenborough showed a huge tree in an unnamed African tree, so big that humans next to it looked tiny. The post said this tree was 1000 years old. 

This too, had comments claiming it to AI generated. One says: ‘Stop the AI.’ This looks like a pointer to the future – in an already deeply troubled world, divided sharply by politics, religion and other dogmas, now we have two more camps – Artificial intelligence and its supporters, and those backing creative human intelligence. 

But let’s get an idea of what AI means before examining the pros and cons.

Simply put, AI is a set of technologies that allow computers to perform tasks that usually require human intelligence. AI uses algorithms, data, and computational power to simulate human intelligence. 

Natural language processing (NLP) allows computers to understand, generate, and manipulate human language. ‘Computer vision’ Allows computers to interpret and analyze the visual world and ‘deep learning’ allows AI to achieve high accuracy. 

AI can perform tasks faster than humans. This isn’t an exaggerated claim. Even the cheapest and simplest calculator can do sums faster than most people, which is why people use pocket calculators. AI can do things at much greater speeds than any calculator. 

AI can perform complex tasks without high costs, without paying salaries to professionals and/or other individuals.

AI can operate 24/7 without breaks (assuming there are no power failures or lengthy breakdowns caused by natural disasters, civil wars etc.).

AI can help people with disabilities.  But there are many other devices which can do the same. Astronomer Stephen Hawking, for example, used a device called the Speech Plus CallText 5010.

In 1985, Stephen Hawking had a life-saving tracheostomy that took away his natural speaking voice.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease or motor neurone disease (MND), had already caused his speech to slur and affected his ability to move.
He communicated by raising his eyebrows when someone pointed at the right letter on a spelling card.

That changed when Walter and Ginger Woltosz, founders of Words Plus, donated a communication system called the Equalizer.

The computer program scrolled through common phrases on a screen, and Hawking could select what he wanted to communicate with the touch of a button.

When he submitted a message, it was processed by a speech synthesizer called the Speech Plus CallText 5010. Its male voice had an American accent which belonged to Dennis H. Klatt.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researcher Dennis Klatt had been working on speech synthesis since the 1960s.

He developed an algorithm called KlattTalk or MITalk. This had three voices — ‘Perfect Paul’, ‘Beautiful Betty’, and ‘Kit the Kid’ — created using hours of recordings from himself, his wife, and his daughter. They were first released in 1984, as part of the DECtalk speech synthesizer.

‘Perfect Paul’ would soon be used by the Speech Plus CallText 5010 synthesizer, too. After Dr. Hawking began using this device, people heard him speak with Denis Klatt’s voice. The DECtalk speech synthesizer, is not AI, but it too, uses an algorithm. Or it may be viewed as a primary stage of artificial intelligence.

We live in an algorithm driven world. For example, social media platforms such as FaceBook and YouTube use algorithms to rate information, whether its audio, words, or video. That’s how ratings are calculated.

Google uses algorithms to classify users tastes and preferences. That’s how users get bombarded with ads pertaining to their likes. 

Before getting too excited by all the technology, however, one should consider the counter-arguments too, carefully.

People ranging from Prof. Yannis Varoufakis and American analyst Ian Bremmer, among others, have voiced concern about the impending AI takeover of daily life and its myriad activities.

Another big claim made on behalf of artificial intelligence is that it may save humanity.

Save it or destroy it, making slaves out of people? Let’s delve into this disturbing question in the next column.