AI won’t conquer the world; that’s a sci-fi concept. Yet, its dominance in business is a sure thing. Remember, the AI takeovers you see in movies are purely imaginative and don’t mirror real life. I just like rephrasing Lord of The Rings quotes. AI has indeed come a long way—but it is still far from replacing humans.
It will still be a long time before they can replicate creativity and conscience—if they ever can.
The last decade has seen tremendous progress in generative AI. OpenAI is leading the effort with the launch of tools like ChatGPT for text, DALL-E for images, and Jukebox for music. These tools use prompts from humans to generate the desired content, and subsequent prompts can be used to fine tune it. But the question remains: can AI imitate human creativity?
To learn more about generative AI, head over to Make Your First GAN Using PyTorch for an introduction.
Let’s take the example of paintings. Western art is traditionally divided into six main eras: Renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, dodern, and contemporary. Each era consists of multiple styles. For instance, contemporary art includes psychedelic, minimalism, realism, graffiti, photorealism, and so on. The list doesn’t end here. There are non-Western art movements as well. There’s Islamic art with focus on calligraphy, abstract art, and mathematical patterns. African art has a different flavor. Far East Asian countries have their own style. All these art movements usually start with an artist (or a group) who was able to imagine a style that did not exist yet.
Will AI be able to do that?
Music too has several genres. Chuck Berry is considered the father of Rock 'n Roll. Will we have AI pioneering a musical genre?
Will companion robots and virtual assistants be able to tell jokes that are not hackneyed? Will companion robots be able to be romantic and not sound like a cliche from a teen flick?Can AI pick the nuances of human language—and intonation?
Let’s not forget the flip side. Will humans be able to cross the “uncanny valleyThe unsettling feeling people experience when AI closely resembles humans in many respects but not convincingly enough”?
Replicating creativity is relatively easier, but can AI replicate conscience? Will their definition of right and wrong be a set of conditional statements? Will they be able to apply ethics to a scenario they have not encountered previously?
Self-awareness of human life and the “algorithmic-ness” of AI are summed up beautifully in an episode of the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Captain Picard says to Commander Data, his android first officer, “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.”
Technology is evolving at the “speed of thought”—with AI at the forefront. Companies need to be prepared and to move quickly; otherwise, its whiplash could lead them to lose their business. This article has just scratched the surface. The submerged part of the proverbial iceberg is much bigger. So just dive in and enjoy the journey!
If you are a manager, AI Project Management: Deploying and Maintaining AI for Business
and Grokking AI for Engineering & Product Managers can help you learn how to integrate AI into your organization.