The growing need to increase our daily productivity has led to the creation and evolution of Artificial Intelligence . And, like any other major technology, there are misconceptions that need to be corrected, as well as urban legends and other myths that turn out to be false. In this article we are going to try to shed a little light on this matter.
Regardless of how the population feels (as many distrust) Artificial Intelligence, it is here to stay, and in fact more and more people trust it as time passes. This mistrust is largely caused by those sci-fi series and movies that have introduced concepts about AI that are not real, so let’s see which of these myths you should stop believing.
The most widespread myths about Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is simply an imitation of human intelligence reproduced by machines. One of its objectives is that machines are capable of reasoning, and not only of drawing logical conclusions and hypotheses from various variables.
Products that use Artificial Intelligence are quite evident in the modern consumer market, and we find them in smartphones, computers and IoT devices without going any further. A rather promising scenario is, however, industry and astronomy; for example, it has played a very important role in the discovery of the planet Kepler-90i in 2017 by NASA / Google, and was in fact the debut of this technology in astronomy.
However, misconceptions about AI have created some concern over the years, and there are many people who think that the potential of AI is limitless and that we could experience a situation like the one seen in the famous Terminator movies, with Skynet. Let’s see how much of all this is a lie and what truths there are in these beliefs and myths.
Machines will replace humans at work
This is one of the most controversial myths about Artificial Intelligence. It holds a notion that there is competition between workers and machines, and surprisingly this is a myth that seems to be more popular with the younger population.
According to Fox Business, despite the more than 200,000 robots currently working in Amazon’s retail warehouses since 2019, its hiring rate of human employees increased 23% between 2019 and 2020, and in fact continues to climb. Given this, what is the importance of robots? An obvious answer to this question is that companies are looking for ways to reduce the workload of their employees; not to replace them completely, as it is considered impossible.
In fact, the “collaboration” between humans and machines goes a long way, and we have another example in courier companies, where an automated system catalogs packages by weight and size, with the machines taking charge of automatically transporting the heaviest packages to free humans from this effort. So in a practical sense this is more of an alliance than a replacement, since as we mentioned before it is considered that no AI can replace a human being.
Artificial Intelligence will rule the world
We must be careful to deal with this myth logically. While some notable AI experts have warned of the imminent dangers of a machine being able to reason, do we really understand their views?
The idea of creating machines that are smarter than men and women is controversial. People like Stephen Hawking and Nick Bilton believe that AI could become out of control in the future, increasing fears of an impending machine apocalypse as depicted in many science fiction movies.
As a counterargument, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made more logical statements about AI regulations, checks and balances. He has compared AI to a demon that we could lose control of if we do not do things properly, but it will all depend on how far humans want to go when creating something that they cannot control.
Although efficiency and precision are the strengths of AI, it remains an obvious fact that it will never be able to reach a person’s level of intuition and emotion, so its “mystical strike” (not logical) is influenced by what let’s do with it. Another pretty strong argument would be that AI could fail us, and indeed, there has already been conclusive evidence of AI failure in medicine, such as the failed cancer treatment recommendation from IBM’s supercomputer WATSON.
The myths about “super humans” with Artificial Intelligence
The 2014 film “The Machine” features a female robot character who goes crazy after reaching a high level of emotional intelligence. Sci-fi movies like this tend to shape people’s views on the future of AI, but establishing our beliefs in mere imaginations doesn’t make sense.
It is clear that Artificial Intelligence now influences decision-making processes at the business level, astronomy, medicine and pharmacy, but the fact is that it does not matter how well you “train” a machine (because after all its learning it depends on the training given to her), since she cannot think for herself after all.
This is a limitation of AI that will take many, many years to overcome, and in fact there are many who believe that it is a barrier that will never be overcome. As such, most processes that use AI will always depend on a final verdict of the people to make the decisions.
Therefore, to think that the potential of AI can create superhumans or dominate the world is currently ridiculous and unthinkable. It makes more sense to portray AI as modern servers that carry out tasks that would be overwhelming to humans accurately and efficiently, but not more intelligently than we do.
AI and Machine Learning are the same
Another myth about Artificial Intelligence is to think that it is the same as Machine Learning, and although they are related terms, they are not the same. The origin of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning dates back to the 1950s (in fact the term Machine Learning was first coined by Arthur Samuel, from IBM, in 1952) after successfully developing a program capable of playing chess.
In short, AI is a machine capable of mimicking human reasoning, while Machine Learning is a subset of AI where people “train” machines to recognize patterns based on data and be able to make predictions, no more, no less.
Robots are the only products of Artificial Intelligence
Again, we owe this false myth to science fiction movies and series. Because of how they make this concept appear in our imaginations, the words Artificial Intelligence make images of robots come to mind. However, AI applies to all spheres of technology. Beyond the concept of robotics, AI offers much more complex creations, such as the facial and fingerprint recognition system of smartphones, the “smart” devices that many people have in their homes, smart devices for the health care and business intelligence, etc.
Robotics is just one of the things you can depend on AI In some cases we can separate the term robotics to refer to machines capable of performing physical (and necessarily physical) tasks automatically, which is why robotics and AI are often used together as if they were the same.
In essence, robots do not necessarily have to be products of Artificial Intelligence, as they can sometimes simply be a combination of mechanical and electrical components (for example, the robotic arm of an assembly line that simply welds one component to another). AI can only influence how these robots behave when applied, but a robot doesn’t necessarily have to be endowed with AI.
These are 5 of the myths about Artificial Intelligence most widespread today, and we hope that this article has helped you to dispel some of the doubts or fears that you may have in this regard.
