THE RISE OF A.I. – SHOULD WE BE WORRIED?

By Manzi Prince Mugisha

A few weeks ago, I published an article on the impact challenges have on shaping the future of an individual. I received pretty positive feedback from most people. Even my mentor liked it and said I had a great choice of words. However, that whole article was not written by me. It was artificial intelligence that wrote it. Amazing, right? The world has come a long way, and I believe that this is just the beginning. You don't believe me. Let me tell you how.

At the end, I referenced an article where I'd gotten most of my ideas. Now, if you repeat my article carefully with the one provided below, you will realize that the ideas and concepts follow one another chronologically. I usually don't write like this. When I reference a certain article, it is because I just took specific key points from it, not everything all at once. So, why do I say that A.I. wrote it? This is because I used an A.I. paraphrasing tool. All I did was copy each paragraph into the site and the machine did the rest.

I did all this because I wanted to test out something. I wanted to determine whether we, as humans, could determine the difference between A.I.-generated text and standard human text. Later on, as I was reading through, I was amazed at how the flow of ideas was smooth. It was even better than the original. So, now that I have exposed my little secret, we now have to ask ourselves the real question, ‘Is artificial intelligence here to destroy us?’ I believe that the answer is two-sided.

On the one hand, it has been found out that for those able to utilize the power of A.I. in their fields, it will go a long way in facilitating and making everyday work simple. For instance, the Health Minister of Rwanda, Dr. Sabin Nsanzimana, is looking into adopting the use of A.I through innovations that save lives with efficiency, as highlighted at the 9th Grand Challenges Annual Meeting held in Dakar, Senegal. We have also heard of various tech and business startups that have been able to utilize A.I. All these are confirmations that A.I will truly not take over the human race, as we have heard some extremists predict. In fact, former ex-Google officer Mo Gawdat, on The Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett, predicted that there is a 5% chance for such to happen. He further emphasizes that we should not be worried about A.I taking over but the motives of the creators themselves, humans. (It is a really great episode, and I would recommend it to you all.)

However, the only risk that A.I seems to pose is a disruption in the employment industry. Thousands have lost their jobs with the coming of A.I. But is this the first time we have heard of this? Of course not. We all know what the Industrial Revolution of 1760 did back then with the introduction of machines and automotives. All I believe is that A.I, just like the Industrial Revolution, is here to facilitate and lead to efficiency in work. But as Mo put it, we should be worried more about the ethics and values of the humans creating A.I because if the values of the parent are upright, then the same will be reflected in the product. Same goes to if the values are evil or destructive.