Artificial Intelligence. Are We Being Overrun?

Artificial Intelligence. Are we being overrun?
Abstract
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has progressed through the years branching into several different fields including medicine, robotics, music, education and even law. Safe to say AI is now a part of our everyday life. This paper aims to discuss in-depth the progression of Artificial Intelligence and the constraints it might pose on the society as we continually rely on expert computer systems to plan our day, to watch out for us and even do small tasks for us. Will the advancement of AI eventually make humanity complacent and ultimately replace human intelligence with machine intelligence?
Introduction
According to Oracle Think Quest (1997), ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the area of computer science focusing on creating machines that can engage on behaviours that humans consider intelligent’. The subject of Artificial Intelligence has been around for a long time with people sharing their different ideas on what the term means. John McCarthy (1958), shortens it the meaning to few words stating that, ‘Our ultimate objective is to make programs that learn from their experience as effectively as humans do’. Long gone are the days where we only use computers for the specific process we programme them for, when in actual reality we depend on computers to educate us as we expect technology to give us the answers to almost everything.
When looking at computer programs, the human brain automatically analyses how this type of expert system works and deduces it down to the conclusion that for an intelligent programme to function, there has to be a programmer in the background pulling all the strings in the background writing all the coding required for the system to work. Which is true to say the least, but as technology advances the need for the programmer might eventually be eliminated leaving a system that is so intelligent it has the ability to learn from its own mistakes. Some might argue that a system that does not require a programmer cuts down on all the unnecessary expenditures and eliminates all the mistakes that are sometime caused by humans, leaving a system that efficient enough to handle all the everyday dealings of the outside world. A reaction to the arguments might be that this type of technology, instead of creating an all perfect environment, might have adverse effects which will eventually be out of our control to rectify the situation. This type of idea has been portrayed in movies such as ‘Eagle Eye (2008)’, in which a rogue computer throws people into different situations manipulating their lives by using the technology of everyday life to track and control their every movements. There is a fear shared by few that replacing human thought and touch with artificial intelligence will leave an environment devoid of human initiative or emotion that might be needed at a particular time.
The field of AI has adapted even into general subconscious human functions like movement, in which companies like Toshiba have branched into a specific field of creating a system that can talk, move and that can perform tasks on its own without guidance.