What is an artificial intelligence?
During my classes on the subject, I have heard many definitions, proposed by my dear students. And almost always all are right. Or, from another point of view, none wrong.
Yeah. Defining artificial intelligence is as complex as defining human intelligence. What makes a human being, an intelligent being? How many different intelligences do we know?
Without wanting to look back - and end up talking about the Cogito ergo sum, the good old "I think, therefore, I exist" - we will guide our gaze to the future. Artificial intelligence grows exponentially.
Even being theorized and studied for a long time, the development of micro-technologies of data storage and "clouds" has generated, for the growth of AI, that point of positive "no return".
Artificial intelligence is the combination of three fundamental elements: big data sources, data models and data processing power.
This last element always took a lot of hardware and big expenses to happen. But the cloud has dramatically accelerated this process, and today AI is going viral in our daily lives. And that’s both unnoticed and fast.
We are always complementing, and sometimes replacing, our reasoning with that of machines. We don’t have to go far: think about how many times our GPS devices advise us a different way. And besides, how often do we take advice without even questioning ourselves.
The machine said, "I’m talking".
Speaking broadly and applied about Human centricity, our way of thinking the world and acting on it will take away the centrality of human thought to deliver it to artificial thinking. This penetration of artificial intelligence is happening in all segments - and, obviously, the work environment will not be out of this.
The productivity of countries has always had to deal with "physical" limits, such as investment and working capital. More work was needed to produce more. Now, to produce more, a country needs to invest in technology. Who is getting ahead of this, is ensuring pole position in the ranking of world economies.
To make the most of growth potential, companies need to focus on converging and integrating technology, data and people. This can be done through four points. The first of which is to prepare the workforce of the future.
Before deciding to die on the beach and not in his own office, Jack Ma, founder of the Alibaba e-commerce platform, stated that our education system can no longer be based solely on knowledge, understood as "information storage". Because, in fact, that means competing directly with machines. It’s bound to fail.
We need to prepare our young people to deal with Assets in which machines cannot compete with humans: empathy, team spirit, art and creativity.
But here’s a point of attention. One of the things machines do most is learn. The machine learning process doesn’t kill class. It’s always sitting in the front row. So our learning process can’t stop at the end of our youth years either. It needs to be constant in time.
The truth is that the parts are reversing. Artificial intelligence was created by mimicking the way the human brain works, reaching impressive levels, such as in the cases of deep learning and natural language processing. But now it’s the human brain that needs to understand the workings of the artificial - adapting to something I’ve called Artificial Oriented Human Learning (AOHL).
Since the education system guides our students to a new era, and accompanies them throughout their work trajectory, can we be confident that we will not fall into other pitfalls of the future led by AOHL? No, we can’t do that.
As I said earlier, there are two more points that we need to pay close attention to. The third one is Ethics.
Suppose a doctor uses AI to diagnose a disease. But that diagnosis is wrong, causing harm to the patient. Whose fault is it? The doctor or the machine?
All right, we’re not going that far. Let’s think about the day to day: you were late for that billion-dollar meeting because your navigation system crashed and took you to the wrong place. Whose responsibility is it?
We need to think about as soon as possible an ethical code needs to discipline the law and the practice in the use of artificial intelligences. Today there is so much talk about privacy of personal data, but anonymous data can become personal on the basis of the way it is used. And often, it will be used by a machine. Incidentally, artificial intelligences will always be more emotionally engaging.
Who will discipline the emotional harassment of a virtual assistant?
Dulcis in fundo, the fourth point is the direction of the redistribution of the effects of this transformation. We have already seen several studies on which "human" jobs will go extinct, being replaced by machines. The elimination of these Jobs will generate unemployment, concentrated in certain segments. It is necessary, as soon as possible, to create a relocation strategy for the most affected segments, taking advantage of the benefits that the transformation is bringing.
Will machines dominate us? I don’t think so (Elon Musk forgive me). However, we have to prepare ourselves to think "artificial oriented". Because, as they say in Brazil, "for everything there is a way" - but to deal with the growth of Artificial Intelligence, no.
