Call It Reality Intelligence

Context: AI has the potential to add $957 billion (Rs 72 lakh crore) to India’s economy in 2035, but it comes with its own prospects and challenges.

Prospects of artificial intelligence (AI)

• Breaking the barrier of dependence on human knowledge: For example, in 2018, Google DeepMind researchers trained a neural network to tackle a virtual maze that spontaneously developed the digital equivalent of grid cells that mammals use to navigate.
• Advancing beyond human capabilities: For example, Google DeepMind mastered ‘Go’, the ancient Chinese game based on intuition, and beat grandmaster and world champion Lee Sedol in 2016.
• Application during pandemic – Revolutionized vaccine production: Vaccine development traditionally takes many years but with AI’s quick analysis of mountains of data figured best immune response in the short period during COVID -19.
• Virtual healthcare: Eg. A doctor at Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH), Mumbai, collaborated on surgery in London.
  • Eg: Microsoft HoloLens to connect virtually, process and display information, and blend with real world, leveraging sensors, advanced optics, and holographic processing gleaned all the patient test reports and scans and conversed with other doctors as if he was there in person.
• Optimising businesses processes: High Sales returns for online fashion, approximately 80% with help of AI and Virtual Reality.
  • Eg: Bigthinx used Smartphone photographs to help a neural network create a digital persona of customers for virtual trials, using 40+ body measurements, to find the right fit.
  • Eg: Robo-advisers build a profile of the investor, using algorithms for trading and portfolio management, minimizing tax loss and optimizing returns.
  • Eg: Betterment, AI-powered financial investing platform, has created $32 billion (Rs 2.41 lakh crore) of assets under management and serves 650,000 customers.

Challenges associated with artificial intelligence (AI)

• Posing an existential threat to human civilization: When these systems do deep learning and reinforce the learning to develop code unaided or start taking decisions autonomously.
  • Increased rumors of unrealistic apocalyptic scenarios that would hurt society.
• Ethical ambiguity: Eg. Who will be culpable when, for instance, an autonomous car crashes into a human being?
  • Eg: Tesla automated electric car with autopilot crashed into a tree in Houston, Texas, the car failed to negotiate a turn, killing two passengers.

Way forward: Human centric development and use of AI

• Regulatory curbs like Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), co-founded by India and 14 other countries, have put human centric development and use of AI at its core as the first step in the right direction.
• Promote innovations: Like Neuralink, a company that has deep exposure to cutting-edge AI seeks to wirelessly connect the brain via a chip to the digital world to enable humans to compete with AI.