WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DEVELOP AT THE COST OF NATURAL INTELLIGENCE ? – By N.S.Venkataraman
From time immemorial, humans have been proud about the natural intelligence that they possess, that help in analysing information , processing of ideas, assessing pros and cons of any scenario and arriving at firm judgements. This is an essential human attribute that animals do not have, as animals do not have the capability to analyse good or bad but are only preoccupied all the time with survival instinct and defending itself against any attacks.
While this attribute of natural intelligence featuring analytical ability , memory power and capability for quick thinking and logical conclusion are inherent in every human being, this has to be utilised by practice and should be fine tuned to improve the natural intelligence capability . If this natural intelligence capability is not nourished and if the power of natural intelligence of humans is not properly utilised by training and practice, it would become dormant and dull in the course of time. This will amount to sacrificing the God given natural intelligence capability.
In a recent consultative meeting, a school teacher based in India narrated an incident to explain how the learning process are steadily changing amongst young students , in tune with the technology advancement and development of various electronic gadgets According to the teacher, when he asked a school student about his age , he correctly said 12 years and 4 months Then, when he was asked his grandfather’s age , he correctly said 79 years and 3 months . ,. . Then , he was asked to state the difference in number between 79 years and 3 months and 12 years and 4 months and was given 20 seconds to give his reply. The student tried to count on his fingers and then started looking around. When he was asked what was he looking for, he said calculator.
In this context, the teacher pointed out that one should recall the practice in the schools in the earlier days when the teacher would give mental sums to students and ask them to give the reply in stipulated time, with the objective of promoting quick and alert thinking capability amongst the students in the formative age group. However, this practice do not seem to be prevalent in most of the schools these days , with young boys and girls seeking to use calculator to count numbers.
Earlier, in the schools , teachers insisted that students must memorise tables and poems . The idea was to strengthen the memory power from the formative age, which would be an essential requirement as one would grow up in age.
Again, in the school days, precis writing exercise was considered as one of the important ways of developing capability amongst the students in the formative age , to assess the salient points of any article, sequence the matter and write it in a precise way providing good understanding for the reader. Now, it appears that this practice of precis writing is no more considered important ,as artificial intelligence can do this job,.
With the growth in technology, even for public speaking , several speakers use teleprompter and the art of extempore public speaking based on evolving thought process suitable for the particular occasion appear to be going for a toss.
When a student studying world history in college was asked by the teacher to quickly sequence the events that led to World War II. the student simply replied that he has to open his laptop to get the details, When it was pointed out to him about the importance of memory power, he simply retorted that there is no need for this sort of memory power , since he has gadgets in front of him to provide quick information. He further said that he would not like to waste his time and energy and fill the brain space by remembering such things ,which are readily available in the website. The teacher got confused by his answer wondering whether the student could be right. Looking at his confused face , the student said politely that the teacher should use artificial intelligence to find an answer and clarity to this question !
Even with the development of artificial intelligence, stress on developing and utilising natural intelligence capability is absolutely important , as artificial intelligence needs to be judged by natural intelligence. As a matter of fact, artificial intelligence has been developed as a science and technique only by humans with the natural intelligence capability.
Under the circumstances, excessive dependence on artificial intelligence for analysis , interpretation and judgement could be a calculated risk. While hailing artificial intelligence as a “technique for all occasions”, this cannot be a be all and end all solutions and have to be essentially considered as a limited technique to be practiced and utilised in a limited way.
Artificial intelligence as a subject is still evolving and policy measures about extent of utilisation of artificial intelligence are yet to be discussed thoroughly and evolved by various governments. There is, as of now, no global consensus on strategy and methodology for utilisation of artificial intelligence.
For the world to progress as a civilised society, natural intelligence , memory power and analytical mental ability and capability to judge between good and evil based on value systems is much needed. In short, natural intelligence can be substituted by artificial intelligence only to a very limited extent.
Let it not be artificial intelligence versus human intelligence but let it be artificial intelligence scrutinised and evaluated carefully and utilised by natural intelligence all the time.
