AI Myths and can we bust them?

There is no doubt that given the advancements in technology, AI has become a frequent topic. You would have to be living under a rock not to come across it yet, and hopefully if you have been following my blog over the last few weeks you will have a comfortable sense of knowledge in this space.

However, there are plenty of misconstrued stories out there and myths that aim to damage the real good AI is doing today. I myself have believed some of them but it can quickly lead to hype and negativity so I hope to clear up a couple of the more popular topics that are circling the internet about what AI can potentially lead to.

New Technologies and Innovation Excite but accuracy can get lost along the way.

A commonly wrote about impact of AI is that some skilled workforce will be out of jobs as they will be replaced by AI.

AI will take our jobs

I mentioned earlier about the disadvantages of AI, when drones will start delivering food deliveries, thus replacing delivery drivers. Now this does suggest that if this idea takes off there will be less demand for delivery drivers, however, this is in just one industry and there is no definite suggestions that the likes of postal workers will be replaced by AI powered robots just yet. If drones do replace more and more delivery jobs, this is largely a case of history repeating itself as it happens constantly and regularly over time.

During the industrial revolution, the car put the horse and buggy industry out of business.

There are reasons to believe that AI will change some exiting jobs and replace them with new ones but if we think about the boring and repetitive work that some people do and the massive impact it would have on their productivity if a portion of that was automated and that time was now free for them to do more challenging and rewarding work it turns from a negative to a big positive in my opinion. I don’t know about you, but there’s a heap of administrative work in my role that I would love to be out of the picture.

AI Is Smarter than people

There is a misconception that AI is super human smart and can outperform humans and anything we do. However, if you think about it, AI didn’t just appear, it is people who create the algorithms and information that make AI. However, given the right algorithms and programming AI can beat humans. In 1997, IBM’s deep blue AI beat Gary Kasparov, a world grand master chess champion after a series of games. By mid 2000s, the technology had improved so much that machines were consistently beating chess grandmasters in pretty much every game. So the lesson here, is that you get out of AI what you put in and over time it will use machine learning to get smarter and smarter. A scary thought, to think that like a human it can learn and improve over time, but this myth can’t really be busted as AI can and will most likely be smarter than people.

There are many many more myths out there and this subject arguably deserves multiple posts

I’ve looked at AI being used for the greater good and hope that a cure for the Covid-19 pandemic can soon be found. I’ve also delved into some of the disadvantages that can occur without due care, but we’ve seen that life like TV shows have been giving AI a bad wrap.

On this note I am going to take a breather and pause for some feedback on what myths you’ve heard circling the internet. I’d love if you could share some with me and perhaps we can bust them together.