Author: ПРОЩЕНКО АННА ЮРЬЕВНА | PROSCHENKO ANNA
Preface
A year ago, as a student at St. Petersburg State University, I started writing a master's thesis. I am studying in the direction of "Russian as a foreign language" (hereinafter RCT), and therefore my research assumed a linguistic orientation. However, I decided to find something more practical, topical, relevant, and in one of the magazines devoted to modern research in the field of RCT, I saw an article about how a chatbot was developed to help students memorize the 100 most frequent words. Then I decided to deal with the issue of neural networks and their application in the field of education, as well as jointly with a student from ITMO University to develop my own product.
Of course, this work forced me to immerse myself in the issue of AI, study the relevant literature, pay attention to everything that is happening around me: all the news and modern developments. The topic of neural networks excites the minds of many programmers, inspires entrepreneurs, and scares ordinary people. And this is not in vain, because neural networks can become both a ticket to a bright future, and a danger that will turn out to be a threat to the entire existing world order.
In this paper, I set myself the goal of speculating about how our lives can change in more than 70 years, what threats such rapid progress poses, and whether people can remain human after total robotization.
Humanity has set off at full speed towards a new reality – the world of machines and artificial intelligence. Neural networks gradually but persistently began to penetrate into all spheres of our lives: they wrote texts, created pictures, analyzed information, began to teach and treat. It all started small, but drop by drop this container was filled with water until it filled it to the brim. What can this bowl become by the year 2100? What will surround a person who wakes up in his bed on Friday morning?
The man of 2100 got up by the alarm clock, which is built into his smart home system. Every day he called at a certain time, and on weekends and holidays he did not bother his master at all. Like clockwork, the coffee maker brewed coffee while the person washed and brushed his teeth, and the toaster was already preparing another portion for an early breakfast. The sensors showed the temperature in the rooms, in the refrigerator and outside. In a gentle voice, the electronic girl prompted to take an umbrella, since a light rain was expected by lunch, and also not to forget the documents that the boss asked to sign and bring two days ago. The clothes in the closet had already been washed and ironed, and clean shoes were on the doorstep.
The person was ready to leave and, closing the door, did not lock it, since the smart home would do this automatically, but he would only open it to someone whose fingerprints are embedded in his database. The man was late, because he spent a little longer in bed than usual (apparently, he was tired at the end of the week), and therefore decided not to take the subway, but to call a taxi, in the cab of which there is no driver. All cars of the year 2100 worked on autopilot and knew themselves when they should go to the gas station, since the correct sensors never failed. In addition to the fuel level, they reported any breakdown and malfunction, notified that a lot of dirt had accumulated on the body and it was urgently necessary to visit the car wash on the way back.
But back to the man. He managed to doze off on the way to work, but was woken up by a calm voice that announced his arrival. The man was lucky. He worked in a sector that can be classified as human-human, that is, his tasks included direct interaction with people, namely their soul, because she worked as a psychologist in a private clinic. Unfortunately, most of the jobs were eliminated, as their places were taken by cars. Neural networks have learned to analyze the world around them better than people, without missing a single minute detail. Their database contained an amount of data that would not fit in any human head. They calculated creditworthiness based on preferences in music and coffee, identified biliary cirrhosis and myasthenia gravis better than any district therapists who once worked in polyclinics and were considered excellent students and medical school.
Unfortunately, all the specialists who performed any kind of mechanical and analytical work have gone into the past. The machine has overcome man in the ability to hold huge blocks of information and, based on instant scanning, isolate what is needed and draw conclusions with amazing accuracy. There were only those who were able to enter into symbiosis with machines, those who worked in tandem and interacted with the human soul, while the machine interacted with the body and consciousness.
At some point, a race resembling a continuous conquest began. Artificial intelligence began to take over, devouring one specialty after another. People fled from their homes in fear. Accountants, factory workers, cashiers and taxi drivers began to receive other professions en masse, but they worked for them for no more than a year, and then moved somewhere else, and then another and another… And this process never stopped, but in the narrowing funnel the density increased, and the competition grew and grew, reaching unimaginable sizes.
Not everyone could withstand such a pace. Powerless, they surrendered to cars and other people and stopped. Because of this, unemployment grew exponentially, and the owners of robots became fabulously rich. This gap between the limited elite of society and the rest of humanity seemed insurmountable. And this has been the case for a very long time.
The economy has never faced such a situation, and the governments of different countries simply did not know what to do in such a situation. The process was getting out of control. Attempts were made to organize large-scale retraining campaigns, introduce standards for the number of people working at the enterprise, and even pay certain benefits on which people deprived of income could somehow live. But each of the methods presented certain difficulties, and some attempts even turned into mass discontent.
But, as already mentioned, our hero was more fortunate, since he worked in the human-to-human field and acted as a kind of "live interface", while the machine stood behind him and confirmed or refuted his guesses about the patient's condition. He managed to get to work on time, hurriedly hung up his slightly rain-soaked coat and sat down in a soft leather armchair waiting for the first patient.
The need for psychologists has skyrocketed. People were trapped in a trap made with their own hands. Someone couldn't recover from the blow after losing their job. Professional activity and career success once occupied a huge part of a person's life, made them feel needed and useful to society, remained a matter of pride and a status marker. Often, when meeting people, they said: "I am Alexey, a simultaneous interpreter, glad to meet you." Now, this loss in consciousness was equated with the loss of one's own self.
The other part couldn't handle the social pressure. After the AI revolution, the bar for society has increased dramatically. Only the best of the best could get a decent education, and even more so a job, become successful and rich. It was impossible to give up slack, and even more so to stop even for a moment in this endless race. It was especially depressing that before the eyes of people in the media and the Internet, endless images of a small stratum of fabulously rich people appeared every now and then, as well as all kinds of advertising of various goods and services that were positioned as "an integral part of the normal life of every self-respecting citizen." The algorithms of neural networks that showed ads taking into account the interests of consumers have reached perfection, and therefore each advertising banner hit exactly the target. The machines knew what was in a person's head and soul, and therefore they could easily put pressure on the patient or inadvertently offer the right "bandage" to seal the "wound". The desires of the masses grew along with the temptation to have more, better and more expensive, and resources dwindled.
Many people came to the psychologist's office unable to cope with loneliness. In many ways, the machines created the illusion of presence, but could not replace a living person nearby. They were not able to feel, empathize, give warmth and laugh heartily. Neural networks have built invisible walls between people, but they have not given a cure for loneliness. Men and women locked themselves in, retreated from reality through books, movies and video games, stuck and washed down cravings for people, but the problem did not go away.
And our hero talked to all of them, diligently recorded their complaints, and then drove them into a special database, where, based on the analysis, artificial intelligence gave a conclusion and recommendations for further treatment. All the stories were carefully recorded in a report, which was sent to the head – the owner of the clinic (one of the former programmers who worked on AI research in the medical field).
During the working day, which lasted until 4 p.m., our hero received more than a dozen patients. Pretty hungry, he decided to take his favorite sandwich with bacon, cheese and egg from a nearby vending machine, and also wash down all the cappuccino with double foam on the go. He specially ran into a cafe across the street from the clinic, where all the food was carefully prepared for him by a pretty robot girl. She was covered with a material frighteningly reminiscent of human skin, and her hair was real... Something unnatural was given out only by glass eyes that blinked surprisingly rarely and looked not at the visitor, but somewhere through. But society has already managed to get used to such personnel and even identify certain advantages (for example, the robot never confused an order, could not go on sick leave or start being rude to a visitor because of a bad mood).
As if nothing had happened, the man took his late lunch from the cold hands of the robot girl and ran on, remembering that his wife had asked him to run into a supermarket not far from home after work. Most had long ago given up shopping in favor of home delivery for an additional fee, but the psychologist and his wife belonged to rare conservatives. The man ran into the grocery store, took a cart on which hung a device that scanned the QR code on an electronic watch. This QR code contained the data that the refrigerator had transmitted. Immediately, as if by magic, a list was displayed: what is on the shelves in sufficient quantity, what is running out, and what is not at all. And then my wife left a note "my mom comes to us on weekends, we need to buy her favorite pistachio roll," and just below the neural network itself gave unobtrusive advice: "According to the latest medical examination, you have a low level of iron in your body, it is recommended to pay attention to the following products: ....". Such a system certainly will not allow you to come home and realize with disappointment that bread and kefir were not bought.
The man quickly completed his purchases, paid at the self-service checkout and indicated the desired address on the cart. She dutifully took all the groceries to their destination, and our hero went to meet friends with whom he spent the rest of the evening. Unfortunately, they mostly sat on their phones and discussed new developments in the field of artificial intelligence, but at that time, live meetings were already considered a curiosity and an exception to the rule rather than the norm. However, such a conservative approach to life allowed the psychologist to have both friends and family. At that time, it was considered a rarity.
So, artificial intelligence and machines took over most of the daily human worries, improved the functioning of many systems, but they also took away people's own "I", made them feel their imperfection, doomed them to loneliness, increased social pressure, changed the political and economic situation in the world. They gave humanity a choice – to leave everything as it is (that is, to completely give power to machines and become passive observers) or to start acting, change yourself and your approach to life, not to let you lose the most valuable thing – humanity. Only humanity and the ability to love can be what elevates a person above robots and turns the situation in a different direction, saves many professions that are on the verge of devaluation, and also preserves the importance of simple human communication.
In 2100, movements are already emerging, all kinds of organizations are being created that raise these issues and promote similar values. In these conditions, only people themselves can change everything and force artificial intelligence not to dominate and subordinate, but to be a useful tool, not to displace and destroy, but to complement and create. If you set the right goal and move in the right direction, if you use true values as a guide, if you eradicate selfish thoughts and greed for profit, then the world of artificial intelligence can become a wonderful place. But everything here depends solely on the choice and actions of the people themselves. Will anything change? It's up to us to decide.
Afterword
I was inspired to write this text by the book "The Superpower of Artificial Intelligence". Its author, Li Kaifu, is a Chinese entrepreneur in the field of artificial intelligence development, vice president of Google and president of Google China from 2005 to 2009. In his work, he raises important questions about the possibility of human and machine coexistence, about the true values inherent only in man, about a new political situation in which two superpowers begin to coexist, ahead of the rest of the world in AI development. In addition, a considerable part of the book is the author's reasoning about possible scenarios for the development of civilization in new realities, hidden threats and opportunities.
In my opinion, in modern conditions, people cannot remain passive observers of what is happening. We can no longer stop progress, just as we once could not prevent the emergence of electricity, television and the Internet. It is foolish to hinder development and be afraid of it as such, but it is in our power to make the right choice and direct it in the right direction, thereby raising the standard of living of people of the new era.