This question might elicit a puzzled smile… Today’s artificial intelligence (machine learning, deep learning, inference engines, etc.) is sometimes called “weak” because each AI program is limited to specific uses or use cases and the results, while powerful for certain use cases, don’t rise to the level of a threat to human workers. So will Artificial Intelligence replace humans and if not why?
Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Humans: No General AI…Yet
The AI algorithms currently available only serve one objective at a time and there is no “general AI” that can do everything. As an example, the AI program that beat Lee Sedol, one of the world’s best Go players, is not the same code that beat the best chess or shogi players. However, all three were produced by the same self-learning platform, AlphaZero, from DeepMind.
Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Humans: Multidisciplinary AI
While current AI is mono-disciplinary, to mimic our human brain’s abilities, AI would need to be, among other things, multidisciplinary – which means that the same algorithm knows how to process different subjects/field of applications, and especially that it is able to learn from previous experiences to make progress. Why? Because AI could then, just like human beings, have common sense, real creativity and empathy, three essential elements for AI to become truly “intelligent” and gradually enter into competition with human beings. The current mono-disciplinary AI is far removed from human intelligence, at least in regard to those many tasks that require common sense, creativity and empathy. Multidisciplinary AI is today a dream called AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). We address it in greater detail in our book, “The Rise of the Cobot“.
Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Humans? Not anytime Soon.
Like many AI experts, I share Oren Etzioni (CEO of AI2)’s opinion, when he states: “We are no closer to AGI than we have ever been”, which is to say, there is no proof that AGI research is making any real progress. So to answer the question, “will Artificial Intelligence replace humans”? the answer is not anytime soon. Phew!
