Ever since the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was conceived in the late 1950s, science fiction writers were quick to publish books of AI escaping the grasp of humans and overpowering them. But will these cataclysmic narratives become a reality? Are we really headed towards such a “doomsday” event that will wipe humanity off the face of the earth?

Seventy years have passed, AI, with the capability to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings like ourselves, now have sufficiently matured to have the capacity to make a profound on the world as we know it. Humanity is already facing a plethora of serious issues — drastic demographic changes, terrorism and labour shortage, to name a few. Given the appropriate safeguards, AI could indeed solve the world’s most pressing problems.

AI companies are now able to manufacture robots that can effectively care for the elderly population. With worldwide birth rates plummeting and the number of people aged 60 and above projected to double to 2.1 billion by 2050, human caregivers will not be able to keep up. Not to worry though, AI is here to the rescue. Robots have been increasingly used As caregivers for the elderly. They have the ability to speak more naturally and even demonstrate emotions through machine learning technology.

Zora, a caregiver bot manufactured by tech company Zorabots, is deployed in a hospital in the French city of Jouille. Zora is often found leading exercises and playing games with the elderly patients there, to the extent that the seniors have grown a strong emotional attachment to “him” or “her”, cooing the machine as if it were a baby.

Indeed, Zora and its cohorts are a testament to the capability of robots powered by AI to be a meaningful substitute for the short-manned caregiver workforce. While nurses are still reluctant to delegate intimate moments like feeding to these caregiver bots, given more re-iterations, they may even like a wonderful meaningful motherly figure to a child!

Counter-measure to terrorism

AI can also be deployed as a plausible counter-measure to terrorism. Through facial recognition software and training, AI would be a handy tool in a toolbox for intelligence agencies to detect and track the movements of “persons-of-interest”. China intends to invest over $30 billion in developing a network of smart surveillance cameras across the country. They aim to be able to identify anyone in the country within 6 seconds by 2030, as reported by a documentary by Channel News Asia. With terrorism costing billions and taking hundreds of lives yearly, AI would play an integral role in taking the fight to the insurgents.

With the labour forces of many developed countries shrinking year-on-year, it seems that nations that took hundreds of years of blood, sweat and tears to reach their current form may just cave in on themselves. Indeed, “Stage 5” countries on the Demographic Transition Model like Germany, Japan and Singapore are feeling the strain. Their workforces are what’s commonly referred to as the “sandwich generation”, where they have to provide for themselves, their parents as well as their children. AI has helped immensely in efforts by these countries to fill in the gaping holes in the workforce.

The Japanese government, for instance, has rolled out its blueprint, titled “Society 5.0” in 2014, where they will integrate AI into the workplace, helping with the repetitive, mundane jobs like plantation farming, factory assembly and data analysis. Already, Japanese workers are seeing the weight lift off their shoulders, and can finally take a breath of relief. Should AI seep into the cracks and gaps in the workforces across the globe, we would certainly expedite our progress as humanity.

Critics of AI often point out that putting AI at the forefront of our militaries can lead to the creation of “killer bots” like The Terminator. As a book by policy analyst Paul Scheuffe pointed out, “more than 30 nations have defensively supervised autonomous weapons that can be deployed faster than humans can react.” Such weapons include the likes of armed drones and smart missiles.

However, while the possibility of such AI-powered advanced military equipment is most definitely real (there are many working prototypes already), regulators will step in with the necessary safeguards to prevent such a perfect storm from brewing, as they have done before with nuclear weapons. The Campaign against killer bots have already garnered the support of 30 countries, the European parliament and 100 non-governmental organisations, along with the backing of 4,500 more AI scientists. This shows that legislation is firm and will not let killer bots slip by unnoticed.

Another group of people that demonstrate large amounts of resistance towards AI are the privacy-concerned. Time and time again, when there is a security breach with the personal data of millions of people exposed, they squawk endlessly about how AI should have no place deciding how netizens can and cannot view. They would bring up China, a country that is notoriously loose on their data protection regulations.

If they had said that 10 or 20 years ago, they can be forgiven for their ignorance. Following the highly infamous 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal, the world has tightened its privacy and data management protocols. Even China passed the Cyber Security Law in 2017, a milestone first set of policies regarding data protection and then the Civil Code, due to be enacted in 2021, which provides the necessary framework for subsequent laws on privacy. The world mopped away the issue quickly, making the privacy issue made by AI no more than a minor hurdle.

AI has evolved much over the years and has matured enough to be capable of suppressing terrorism, supplementing the workforce and being great companions. Thus, with these benefits they could indeed be conduits for solving real-world problems.

Perhaps the novels on AI destroying humanity were all far-fetched after all…