It was 7.30 pm and raining heavily. I stood
in front of the Seminar hall waiting for
my Uber.
I checked my smartphone .
My
cab was just about 1 minute away. It
arrived and I swiftly ran from the shade of the outer atrium of the hall towards
the gate, got into the taxi and heaved a sigh of relief.
But my relief was very short lived.
“Let’s go !” I said.
The Uber driver was
fiddling with his phone - shaking wiping
, putting it near his cheeks and ears .
“Sorry Mam, I cannot
go. Please cancel this ride and get another one “, the driver said .
“What ! But Why ? It is raining so heavily , can’t you see
? And I have a doctor’s appointment at 8
pm ! “
“Mam, I can go but you will have to tell me
the directions. GPS is not working
because phone is damaged. It fell into a puddle when I was helping the earlier
passenger with her bags.”
“Oh God !” I groaned.
I
tried to open the net but by that time it has started raining cats and dogs. My
current location was below a flyover and there was almost no network. And the torrential
rain made the connectivity almost nil.
I was really flabbergasted.
I was going to this doctor for the first
time. In the morning , my husband had asked me to look up the direction on
google maps but I had refused.
“I will anyways get an
Uber . With technology , I don’t even have to communicate with the chauffeur. I
will reach on time. Don’t you worry !” I had laughed.
I never imagined that
my laugh will cost me so heavily !
And
at that moment, I truly realized the extent of our dependency on technology.
Or you can call it on Artificial Intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence,
Machine Learning and now the most recent , Deep Learning.
Let me first try to
explain these in layman terms.
Artificial Intelligence
is the broad umbrella term for attempting to make computers think the way
humans think, be able to simulate the kinds of things that humans do and finally
the machines solve problems in a better
and faster way than we do.
John McCarthy, widely recognized as one of
the godfathers of Artificial Intelligence (AI), defined AI
as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines that
have the ability to achieve goals like humans do”. In short, Artificial
Intelligence is human intelligence exhibited by Machines.
In fact AI has been around for quite a while.
Though the term Artificial Intelligence
was coined at the Dartmouth Conference in 1955, simple things like computers,
calculators, computer games , washing machine, dishwasher – anything which the
machine does faster and better than human beings comes under the umbrella of
Artificial Intelligence.
It was only since 2015, the domain of AI started becoming more focused and narrow.
This
gave birth to Machine Learning . The
idea behind Machine Learning is fairly simple.
Rather than programming
computers to be smart by hand-coding software routines with a specific set of
instructions to accomplish a particular task, you give machines access to a
large number of sample data and code them to find patterns and learn on their
own how to perform the task.
Machine Learning is built based on
algorithmic approaches that over the years included decision tree learning, inductive logic programming, clustering, reinforcement learning, Bayesian networks etc.
Let me try to make it simpler.
When
I taught the English Alphabets to my daughter - ,A for Apple, B for Ball, C for
Cat, I did not tell her the algorithm
to identify the features and then decide what is it. I simply showed her the
picture of an apple , a ball and a
cat. When I bought fruits , I showed her
apples - some green , some red. When I went to the park as saw a cat sitting
there, I held her hands and said “ See ,
a Cat !” .
So when she saw multiple examples of the object and then her human brain automatically
identified the features so that her brain could identify that
object.
This is exactly what a Machine Learning Model does.
Human brain is a machine par excellence. The Same thing is simulated in Machine
Learning. Huge amount of data is fed
into the computer and after analysis of the data, prediction can be made and some
action is taken.
Google uses Machine
Learning to filter out spam messages.
Amazon and other top technology driven e-commerce sites use machine
learning wand data analytics to advertise their goods based on what the algorithm
predicts about your needs and tastes.
Now about Deep Learning. This is
even more focused and intense , the next level of AI.
Deep learning was inspired by the structure and
function of the brain, namely the interconnecting of many neurons. Neural
Networks are algorithms that mimic the biological structure of the brain. In
the brain, the neural points are physically spaced out, but in Deep learning,
there are layers of neural network.
Deep Learning can be explained as a system of probability. Based on a
large dataset you feed to it, it is able to make statements, decisions or
predictions with a degree of certainty. So the system might be 63% confident
that there is a cat on the image, 81% confident that it’s an animal and 4%
confident it’s a toy. Then you can add on the top of it a feedback loop,
telling the machine whether it decisions were correct. That enables learning
and possibility to modify decisions it takes in the future.
Again I will try to make it simpler.
Suppose there is a traffic
signal detector installed in a driver less car . After processing billions and trillions of data, the first
layer will decide that there is a probability of 81 % that there is a rectangle
. This decision will passed on to the
next layer of the neural network which
will again process a humongous amount of data and give a signal to the next
layer that there is a 72% probability that the rectangle is a traffic signal with red , yellow and green light on it. This then
goes to the next layer and to the next and so on.
Finally the signal detector
will take a decision whether to drive ahead or not. And it will take back data cues whether the decion was correct or not and improve itself for doing better next time.
As in my
previous example of teaching alphabets to my daughter, Deep Learning can be
compared to the way she became capable
of learning from mistakes and constantly improving. Like when she called the dog a cat
and she got a poor grade in her test, she was given the feedback, she corrected
herself and improved . She then became capable of learning new objects on her
own.
Deep learning is being implemented for driver less
cars, face recognition, pattern
recognition, forecasting, the list is huge.
The future is wide. But somehow I
tremble at the thought of the future.
When I start thinking , I am scared.
Will machines replace human beings
? Already we are at a stage where for several tasks, we trust the machine
more. Earlier, for giving loans, the
data was analysed by human beings for deciding whether to give the loan or not.
But nowadays, the banks rely on the computer algorithm , which scans and processes
huge amount of data and tells us whether to process the loan or not.
If you ask the bank why your
loan was not sanctioned, they might just shrug their shoulders and say – I don’t
know but the computer said so !
And like
by Uber driver refused to complete my ride because of a technological glitch, will a time come when machines will literally
rule us ?
In the
Industrial Revolution when F.W Taylor came up with the scientific model of
management, it gave rise to processes
and greater productivity. But assembly line production in factories, created jobs too.
But
with Artificial Intelligence, the human
jobs might be completely eliminated.
And it's not just in
factories, but truckers, drivers and even jobs like telesales,
customer service and hematologists as well as radiologists over the
next 15 years are going to be gradually replaced by artificial
intelligence.
Sundar
Pichai, the CEO of Google has said that “in the next 10 years it will be AI
first !” .
AI is cheaper and more productive . It doesn’t sleep, need breaks,
get sick or take vacations, and it doesn’t need health insurance or retirement
benefits. It can work 24X7, faster, better and accurately. With Deep Learning,
AI can quickly acquire and learn new
skills too without making mistakes
!
Isn’t this too scary ?
I know that
repetitive and boring jobs will be replaced by AI. But many learned people have
predicted that by 2050, there will a big chunk of people who will not only be
unemployed but also unemployable !
So
what will happen to my economically poor housemaid, my not so intelligent, personal
driver and the good natured neighborhood
carpenter ? How will they sustain themselves ?
AlphaGo is a
computer program that plays board game. It has been developed by Google’s DeepMind,
using Deep Learning.
Reently AlphaGo defeated
the world champion Ke Jie.
And how Ke Jie
cried !
With all these
technological advances, have we become happier than our forefathers ? I really don't think so !
We have already lost simple joys of life like
receiving letters from our dear ones and
preserving them for later. Many a times I have taken out the bundle of letters written by my husband during
our courtship days , read and re read them , feeling the written word, smelling
the musty smell of the paper.
The joy of waiting for my Uncle coming to visit
us, running towards the gate whenever I heard the sweet tinkle of the bell of
the rickshaw , cursing the train service for being late and then jumping with
joy when he scooped me in his arms when he finally came home !
Simple thing
like peeking out of the taxi window to ask a shopkeeper or a passerby about an address
location and smiling back at him.
In these
interesting times, will a time come when humanoids will exist together with
human beings ?
It is already a reality.
Sofia, the
first humanoid robot , made her first public appearance in 2016.
She is a doe
eyed woman with delicate features, designed to look like Audrey Hepburn.
AI allows her to hold eye contact, recognize
faces and understand human speech. Cameras within Sophia's eyes combined
with computer algorithms allow her to see. She can follow faces, sustain eye
contact, and recognize individuals. She is able to process speech and have
conversations using a natural language subsystem. She has become a
citizen of Saudi Arabia !
Ke Jie cried
when he lost the game to AlphaGo. He loved his game so much that it broke his
heart.
Did AlphaGo feel pleasure or happiness when it won ? Definitely not .
And Sophia, she might become super intelligent
but her deadpan voice tone, mechanical facial expression will never be able to
replicate the rush of Adrenalin and the heavenly emotions of love, pain and joy.
We are living in very interesting times. Let us see
what holds in the future. Maybe it will be like what Charles Dickens had expressed in the immortal opening lines of his novel - The Tale of Two cities
“It was
the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was
the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of
incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was
the spring of hope….. “
Let us hope for the best !
I was conducting a session on Stress Management for an organization. 
Victor
Emil Frankl (1905 – 1997) was a Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust
survivor, devoted his life to studying, understanding and promoting “meaning.”
His famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning, tells the story of how he survived
the Holocaust by finding personal meaning in the experience, which gave him the
will to live through it. He went on to later establish a new school of
existential therapy called logotherapy, based in the premise that man’s underlying
motivator in life is a “will to meaning,” even in the most difficult of
circumstances. 
