Man vs. Machine
It was the year of 1997. Chess fans from all over the world were buzzing. It
was going to be a historic match. IBM’s chess playing program, Deep blue,
had challenged the reigning World Champion Garry Kasparov to a best of 6
match. The score was tied to 2.5-2.5 in the first five rounds. The last round
Deep Blue went on a fierce attack to crush the World Champion. It was all
over the newspapers,”Human race has been left behind by machines.” was all
they said. Soon machines will take over everything, ranging from little jobs to
the creation of new machines themselves. It was supposed to be the sunset of
mankind.
However, twenty years later we find none of that true. Chess is booming as
are job oppurtunities. If anything, machines and artificial intelligence have
made our lives easier and safer and faster. This is what Garry Kasparov wrote
after losing the match”Deep thinking; Where Artificial Intelligence Ends and
Human Creativity Begins.” People have always been apprehensive about new
innovations. But time has always proved them wrong.
We all know what a machine is. It is physically anything that makes our work
easier. Earlier, people used machines for various purposes without fear.
Where does this thinking “Machines will take over us” come from? It comes
from a rather new invention ‘Artificial Intelligence’.
AI refers to machines which can think and decide something themselves i.e.
use logic. The reasons people fear it is not only because they eerily mimic or
predict human behaviour (like when scrolling through social media we see ads
only of things we like or previously bought), but also because no one knows
how they are made. Basically a coder makes two bots, a tester and a maker
bot. The maker makes another bot of random code and the tester selects the
one which can do the work best, for example differentiate between ‘B’ and
‘bee’. The one who can do it best is selected. This process is repeated trillions
of time till the bot becomes perfect. We feel safe with other machines as we
know that if we don’t know its intricacies, at least someone does. But such is
not the case with AI.
You might say” well i didn't even know that until today, why would i fear it?”
Then let me ask you,did you ever fear that a car runs faster than any man will
ever dream? Not only machines are faster, they are stronger, do not get tired
etc. We were never in the race with them. So, it is futile to think about that.
The only thing which some people proudly say a machine will never match is
Human creativity. And this is mankind’s greatest asset. A machine can only
work inside a closed environment i.e. an AI programmed to distinguish ‘B’ and
‘Bee’ will never play chess or vice versa. We, as humans as fragile and weak
we are, have the ability to adapt.
So the question should not be Man vs. Machine. It should be Man and
Machine. Two objects need not be equal to complement each other. It is only
through symbiotic relationships that we both can thrive.