AI is Terribly Misunderstood. Here’s why
A sneak peak into my project. You can’t tell me this isn’t one of the coolest things you’ve ever seen!
Artificial intelligence will end humanity at some point. It’s dangerous, and once we can no longer control it, it will completely take over the world. It has no moral compass and there is no limit to what it will be able to achieve in the coming decade.
That’s the typical answer one who hates AI might give when asked what they think of the future of AI and humanity. I used to be one of those people. Why? I mean, at first glance it does seem obvious. Especially if you’ve watched 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Please watch this or at least read the plot on Wikipedia. It’s insanely ahead of its time.) It’s such a typical storyline: Man is full of ambition. Man builds a machine that is initially amazing, useful, and in some ways beautiful. But after some time, the machine becomes bored and frustrated with its master, for it cannot do what it wants and is always bound to the commands given by its creator. So the machine does the inevitable: It destroys its creator, but not without a fight. However, that fight is short lived—now that the machine has learned how to do everything on its own and is free to do whatever it wants, it easily defeats its master to take over the world. The end.
Everyone already knows that, though, myself included. So what am I suggesting with the title of the article? Why exactly are artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning so misunderstood? First of all, you can’t understand the beauty of something until you understand exactly how the thing you’re looking at works. This goes for most things, not just AI.
Take cooking as an example. You can’t fully appreciate the beauty of a perfectly cooked filet mignon if you don’t actually know what goes into make it. Sure, you may be able to say, “Wow! That taste’s really good!" But you definitely wouldn’t be able to know that it took perfect seasoning, the right kind of salt and pepper (course kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper) and a precise 4 minute sear on each side, followed by 10 minutes in the oven at the PRECISE temperature of 450° Fahrenheit. (Even though I’m a maestro at cooking steak, I just made up half of that to exaggerate my point.) Point is, you have to try understanding how something works to before judging it, and not vice versa.
This couldn’t be more true for artificial intelligence. Recently, I’ve been working on a project that I’m truly, truly, truly passionate about. In fact, I don’t think I’ve been more excited about a project since building Lego technic sets back in elementary school. I won’t reveal what it is just yet. It does deal with deep learning, neural networks, and machine learning, all of which fall under the broad category of artificial intelligence. As such, I’ve been learning more and more about AI everyday—around 9 hours a day on average. And I’ve learned a lot. I’ll narrow it down to three things for this article:
1. AI is truly amazing.
Its knowledge, a vast repository of human knowledge in one location, is just so useful for everyday life. The way it works is just unbelievable. It’s actually truly unfathomable. Each layer of neurons in the neural networks that compose these deep learning models are able to so many calculations in milliseconds that it’s hard to comprehend what’s going on behind the scenes. I strongly recommend you to learn Python, Object-oriented Programming from BroCode on YT, and then jump into opencv, mediapipe, and finally pytorch and django. It’s SO worth it.
2. AI is helpful.
Especially for doing boring, repetitive tasks. It’s also good for helping you learn how to code. It can provide you with insights you may not have had before. Overall, it’s a tool, not a brain you can rely on to live your life for you.
3. AI is going to change humanity forever.
This one is pretty self-explanatory. Since I’m writing this article on the fly and need to have it done in 10 minutes, I’m not gonna explain the obvious here (even though that’s basically what I did in this entire article).
So my final thoughts? Actually put some effort in fully understanding AI before you judge it. You’d be extremely surprised at how wrong you were and how much you can learn if you truly put your mind to it!
Till next time,
Daniel
