ARTIFICIAL intelligence, the all-consuming, hyper-powerful computer science, has expeditiously replaced humans in industrial automation, work entailing repetitiveness, data analysis and prediction.
To reach its mechanical goal, AI was designed as a double-edged sword, venting parallels of anarchy and the promised land of technological benevolence.
AI is as good, or as bad, as its programmers design it to be, sometimes producing terribly biased results buttressed by historical prejudices. In this sense, AI can be alluded to as a Pandora's box, that fictionally sinister artefact from ancient Greek mythology.
Underscoring its malevolence, the allegorical box was so named after Pandora, ancient Greece's "dangerous" woman created by the gods as a blessing, and a curse, to serve humanity. The original double-edged sword.
Zeus, ruling as the king of the gods on Mount Olympus, gifted a closed box to Pandora, with strict instructions not to open it. However, Pandora's intense curiosity saw her open the box, unconscionably releasing all manner of torment unto humankind: sorrow, disease, vice, violence, greed, madness, old age and death.
While the Pandora's box-like allegory can be transposed in an AI box, its engineers and deep-pocketed evangelists hope to reverse civilisation's misery.
Like Pandora's box, AI's algorithms — once uncaged — are so complex and complicated that they can't be trusted just yet to tackle criminal justice or even a simple individual background check.
Still, AI transcends seamlessly in analysing mountains of personal and inane data but one that invariably exposes privacy and security, a loophole that scammers exploit to manipulate and cheat victims.
Lately, the AI debasement has become obvious: students passing off AI-written essays as assignments and deepfakes of politicians and celebrities that fool and influence people.
Here's an AI extinction-level event to avoid: self-aware, uncontrollable Terminator-like machines wreaking havoc on humankind. Nevertheless, AI's humanitarian counter-balance can detect early-stage cancer with the prospect of discovering a lasting cure.
This is AI's gift touted by Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad. His ministry is open to incorporating the technology, particularly in cancer diagnosis at public hospitals. However, Dr Dzulkefly has cautioned that the technology must first prove its safety, effectiveness and cost-efficiency.
Here's how AI is designed to battle diseases: it predicts drug responses, improves treatment outcome, reduces radiotherapy waiting time by speedily identifying tumours, predicts gene mutations and discovers new approaches to kill off cancer cells.
All well and good, except that AI hasn't emulated human intuition to understand context, creativity, emotion and adaptation. At least not yet. AI has lived up to its promise to make businesses multiply efficiency and profitability, at least in multinational corporations heavily invested in its monetisation.
Other than detecting and curing diseases, we hope that AI will overcome its unwieldy reputation to fulfil these utopian objectives: cleanse Earth of its toxic pollution, generate abundant food and water, and end wars, poverty and inequality.
Like it or not, AI is already commanding our lives: humans just have to adapt and embrace it.