Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers unlimited possibilities. But... Is it? (Image: Towards Data Science)

The advantages and disadvantages of AI

As technology advances to the new level, Artificial Intelligence (AI) gets more demand than ever. A quick definition of AI, it is an activity where machine imitates human intelligence in a pattern. You can see AI in several forms nowadays such as Alexa, Siri, Google’s predictive search, smart replies, and chatbots.

However, as we are facing more and more AI on the rise, what should we consider? By the existence of AI, indeed, it contributes much to mankind. It eases our life in the matter we could not handle in the first place.

Weather prediction is more accurate. AI analyzes data and calculates the possibility of weather anomalies. On certain points, AI could predict natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. Of course, this helps the SAR team and other agencies to prevent and tackle the issue. Besides, by the smart prediction, AI helps the agricultural sector, predicting the weather to maximize crop yield.

Smart cars and companies cannot come true without the concept of AI. AI helps companies to produce a blueprint for a green company with huge energy optimization. A green and more efficient design cannot be produced by old-school engineering science. It needs a boost from the latest technology, i.e. the AI. Not only companies but AI also drives for you. No more chauffeur, AI will get you to your destination on time. With precision timing on gas, brake, nudge, AI-powered cars seem to be the future all writers of Hollywood movies were dreaming about.

In terms of healthcare, AI also contributes a lot in assisting doctors & surgeons, by arranging medical data, images, records, and notes. This is the result of a deep learning process. Since then, AI makes healthcare more affordable and accessible for the people.

AI helps mankind communicate with each other. The great thing is that communication is no longer limited by language as AI marches forward to help you understand all language. In 2018, it was a huge project by Microsoft called “Neural Machine Translation” (NMT). With NMT, people can translate images and texts in high quality and speed. Thus, no more trivial misunderstandings.

With this, the prospect of AI should be bigger than ever. However, some people are still conservative when it comes to technology. Of course, the fear is more than just robot’s takeover the world. The robot has already begun taking over our job. It can do things humans used to do, and it does it more effectively than us. As a result, the gap between the rich and the poor will widen as AI advances more and more.

Besides, people are getting aware of the danger behind technology such as information breach. Ask Facebook, which recently got US$5 billion fine for privacy breach and information misuse. AI in healthcare cannot advance further because the law regulates the algorithm and people are afraid that their private information will be shared with other parties.

Despite being useful in the automotive sector, AI in cars also has its drawbacks. With precise timing, AI still makes some calculations error which results in fatal accidents. In other words, human makes mistake in driving, it makes them more cynical toward AI in cars because they are not in control of it.

In brief, AI has its ups and downs. For now, the downs are still too fatal even though AI advances human’s life quality to further degree. It is us who decide to trust science and develop it to ease our life or to abandon it and live as we are now.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/08/02/what-are-the-risks-and-benefits-of-artificial-intelligence/#42aea5d34d8b