By Jayakrishnan J S
In 1981, renowned filmmaker James Cameron had a dream in Italy. He recollected an image of a chrome skeleton emerging from the fire, an essential thread to his 1984 blockbuster, “The Terminator.” The movie had a plot where an augmented human time travels from 2029 back to 1984 to kill a human who is going to save mankind from being extinct. Coming to reality, 2029 is not too far away, and the concept of artificial intelligence has shown significant advancement, which even has created an assumption that AI will take over mankind shortly. Many movies inspired by Terminator acted as a medium to inform the people about mankind being destroyed by technology. Let us glance at how well people know the concept of artificial intelligence.
The term artificial intelligence (AI) was coined almost five decades ago. The foremost thing that needs to be explained is that this is not confined to robots that carry out all the tasks humans perform and gradually dominate themselves in the world. This is technology being applied to help mankind in almost everything that makes life easy. Even the smartphone we use represents artificial intelligence, which is why you see suggestions. At the same time, you search on google and see advertisements on social media related to what you search in your search engines. Machine learning in AI provides the specification of the system to adapt the performance similar to humans. The advanced version of this is deep learning, where the system needs significantly less human interference and imitates human procedures for work. In short, it can replace human resources!
The invention of computers helped mankind by saving a lot of time and effort. Have you imagined how well that people who work in a bank trust computers for their accuracy in the calculation? But in this context of AI, rather than a helping tool, there is a possibility to entirely replace a human laborer from work. It reduces labor costs, avoids accommodations, zero sick leaves, and completely avoids human errors. The fancy robots serving at a restaurant don’t carry any emotions and hence no complaints or guilt feelings. No paid leaves or getting tired, and most importantly, you can have them at your workplace and run your business even if there is a snowstorm or flood. The employers would be more than happy to have them. Many corporates are promoting AI in the workplace for better efficiency and accuracy. Tesla has a vision of having automated taxi services, which could ultimately create revolutionary changes in the hospitality industry. All this news dwells up the common man.
While interacting with international students in Canada, they said they wanted to avoid using smartphones and get confined to a regular phone from which they could just make phone calls and text messages and detoxify from social media. However, this wasn’t easy for the student. Starting from emails to online banking and video calls to parents were all reasons why they couldn’t quit using smartphones. They added that it was not practical to take the laptops everywhere. If this is the situation for an individual, imagine the situation of MNCs that have redesigned their operational structure based on technological advancement. However, we cannot predict how it will affect human resources in the long run. Organizations do benefit from the utilization of artificial intelligence like any individual. Innovations are happening to technology day by day. We never thought of having a virtual classroom from home, even by the end of the last century. This was the only option to continue classroom learning during the pandemic; thus, it became the need of the hour. This situation proves how well technology has invaded society as a necessity for all.
This pandemic has skyrocketed the rate of unemployment around the globe. People are working more on indulging AI in many fields, including administration. In this way, we can save lots of time in legal proceedings, but at the same time, it also reduces the involvement of human labor. Therefore, it is indeed confusing to conclude whether to oppose or support the application of AI in the workplace. Like any other invention, it has its own pros and cons. An interesting factor is that human beings are very much adaptable to change. If people can adapt to the change in technology and utilize its potential to the fullest, it can lead to prosperity. The cost of the internet has reduced over the decade, which has been utilized as a money-minting option by a lot of people across the globe. As internet prices went down, they became affordable to many. This created a space for online content creation, which has eventually helped build a career for many. This opportunity was led by the innovation of technology. Let’s be optimistic. There is a saying that technology is best when it brings people together. A significant probability is that the same technology may sometimes bring people together to explicit all uncertainties.
