Remnants of Imagination | Artificial Intelligence... Where Are We Heading?
Forty-two years ago, my colleague, the Deputy Managing Director, Mr. Gerard Orfali, and I were on a banking business visit to South Korea when the Managing Director of the South Korean company Daewoo invited us to tour its facilities, which specialized in manufacturing automobiles, heavy trucks, oil tankers, as well as electronic devices, construction, and road building. Since this company was not well known in the Gulf region, it showed us a documentary about its achievements. Among the astonishing information presented was that more than 35% of the industrial robots used in European factories were products of Daewoo. At that time, we recognized the technological strength of Korean companies in competing with European and American firms. If a single Korean company was supplying European factories with such a large number of robots more than four decades ago, how many other Korean companies were supplying European and American factories with robots, not to mention the capabilities of Japanese, Chinese, and other companies in this field? And if European and American companies are laying off tens of thousands of employees each year, despite generating billions of dollars in profits, have they begun using robots to reduce costs? What is the current share of Asian countries in the global robot manufacturing industry?
When we were preoccupied with the coronavirus pandemic, I received a video clip showing the use of robots in various fields in China, Japan, and the two Koreas. I thought that the role of humans had been eliminated from many professions. The Chinese relied on robots patrolling the streets to look for individuals infected with the coronavirus. If such a robot encountered a person with a high temperature, it ordered the infected individual to stop moving, sounded an alarm to warn passersby to keep their distance from the infected person, and instructed them to wear masks. It would then contact security personnel to report the new case so that appropriate measures could be taken. There were also robots distributing meals to people in quarantine. If this was the situation six years ago, where has the world reached today in the development of robotics?
More than 39 years ago (1987), the film RoboCop was released. The story revolves around a city plagued by criminals and highwaymen who brutally murdered a police officer. Afterward, he was transformed into an indestructible, armored robotic police officer through surgery, with electronic and mechanical technologies integrated into his biological organs to enhance his physical capabilities and compensate for some of his lost functions. Today, Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX and Tesla, states that artificial intelligence is far more dangerous than nuclear weapons. Humans invented artificial intelligence, but what humans did was design learning algorithms that interact with data programmed into the AI to produce complex neural networks suitable for performing specific tasks, even if we do not fully understand how these networks accomplish these things.
Many people’s ignorance of how artificial intelligence works often leads those who created it yesterday to fear it today. In fact, companies that led the race in developing AI models in recent years now speak of their despair at slowing down this marathon, citing risks that exceed their ability to control its technological capabilities, due to the increasing ability of AI to operate independently and execute complex tasks without human intervention. While the West attempts to curb the development of artificial intelligence, China is advancing its AI capabilities. Therefore, we do not only ask, “Where is the AI race heading an hour from now?” but also: Has artificial intelligence begun to control humans?
