Rise of the androids: Don’t let artificial intelligence technology outsmart you

I’ve never really loved smartphones. 

I’m immersed in a millennial lifestyle at the university level, however, where constant connectivity is an unspoken requirement. I’m expected to check my email 10 times a day and be available to professors, employers and peers at any given moment.

The only positive about adopting my Android phone was the SwiftKey keyboard app, which allowed me to barely think as I texted. But, then again — it allowed me to barely think as I texted.

SwiftKey’s suggestions were always poignant, almost always correct. It was as if the app could read my mind and know what I wanted to say next.

In essence, it freaked me out.

What most users of the popular app don’t realize is that a basic prototype for artificial intelligence is at work behind the scenes of SwiftKey. In the last 20 years, we’ve gone from payphones to handheld devices that can read your mind. Artificial intelligence is fearfully growing at an exponential rate, and, although we should embrace advances in AI, we must be wary of possible and probable negative ramifications.

In the short run, AI technology eliminates handfuls of jobs that humans previously completed. Who needs to hire Jane Doe to do your taxes if we have an intelligent algorithm to do it for us? AI could eradicate the necessity for human work in several fields, namely engineering, law and other areas where algorithms can sift through information more quickly than a human. Some of these algorithms artificially “learn” with time. So, no careers are completely safe, not even the cognitively advanced.

Equally troubling, AI increases the likelihood for cyber crime. Criminals who have AI technology at their disposal can use it to commit fraud quite easily. Impersonating a human to gain vital credit card info, social security and more has never been so simple.

AI technology does make life easier, though — SwiftKey, created by the London-based company TouchType, can make texting up to 50 percent quicker. It predicts most words accurately without even typing a single letter — the keyboard predicts what word you want to insert after the previous one. In some scenarios, though, it takes a whopping 1-2 letters for the app to read your mind.

SwiftKey is just a needle in the haystack.

In an interview with the BBC last month, Stephen Hawking, a noteworthy English theoretical physicist, discussed the artificial intelligence technology he uses to speak and write. Hawking suffers from an advanced stage of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which has left him crippled and unable to speak. He recently upgraded to a new communication platform called ACAT — Assistive Context Aware Toolkit, after he became too weak to operate his old machinery by hand. 

A small, black box rests under Hawking’s wheelchair. This container holds a USB hardware key that receives input from an infrared sensor focused on his eyeglasses. The beam detects changes in light when Hawking moves his cheek. The infrared beam sends input to a hardware voice synthesizer, which creates an artificial voice for Hawking.

With the twitch of a single facial muscle, AI technology gives Hawking another chance at speech.

Despite successes in the technology he uses to help him communicate, Hawking expresses concern about the future of artificial intelligence. 

According to Hawking, “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

At a certain point, the technology may become too intelligent for our own good. The processes of biological evolution slow human progress over time, but androids don’t have this problem. AI technology could supersede human intelligence quite easily.

Once a piece of AI technology takes off, it could have the ability to recreate and redesign itself without a human. 

The 2014 film “Transcendence,” starring Johnny Depp, reflects this idea. In the film, Depp, a celebrated scientist, uploads his consciousness to an artificial intelligence system prior to his death. The computer created an android version of Depp. Over time, the system required more and more space to expand, however, eventually becoming manipulative and trying to kill anyone in the way of its expansion.

“Transcendence” both intrigued and terrified me. I am fearful that, at a certain point, technology will muster its own form of consciousness. This consciousness would be ever-developing, to the point that it would learn more quickly than its inventors. 

We can pinpoint how eerily close we’ve come to overly intelligent AI prototypes through the Turing test. The test, designed by Alan Turing in 1950, seeks to discover if computers can dupe humans into believing they are conversing with another human. Essentially, the test seeks to judge whether or not computers can veil themselves as conscious. 

Creepily enough, after a half century of failures, a program has passed the Turing test.

Eugene Goostman, the computer program that passed the test, fooled about 33 percent of judges into thinking it was human. It acts as a 13-year-old boy from Ukraine with its own personality. The program is hosted online for the public at princetonai.com.

In the long-term, it is possible that AI technology could harm the human race through creating a consciousness that is “smarter” or more expansive than human thought.

So, what’s the end game here? I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t use SwiftKey — I love it. It makes my life easier. I just want us to consider the consequences of our expansion into artificial intelligence technology. We must keep ourselves in line, We must continue to question “how far is too far?”

So, keep using your smartphone. Just don’t let it outsmart you.

Courtney Linder is the Assistant Opinions Editor of The Pitt News and primarily writes on social issues.

Write to Courtney at cnl13@pitt.edu.