Kochi: The world should be very optimistic about artificial intelligence (AI) as it is going to have a positive impact on multiple sectors in the coming days, a Google scientist said here on Thursday.
Dileep George, director of research at DeepMind, a British-American artificial intelligence research laboratory which serves as a subsidiary of Google, shared the optimism with the delegates of Manorama News Conclave 2023 during a discussion on ‘AI: Walls, pitfalls and possibilities’.

“I started working in AI in 2003-04. It was a dirty word then. It was called machine learning then. People had little optimism about it. When I raised funding for my company in 2010 the word AI was not used. I’m optimistic by nature and also realistic. My suggestion is that we should be very optimistic about AI,” Dileep said, in an interaction with Harish Shivaramakrishnan, chief design officer, of CRED. Harish, a noted singer, wanted to hear from Dileep how optimistic one should be about AI.

“In the past 10 years, AI was more in labs. Next 4-5 years, it will have an impact on many sectors. Take the instance of healthcare, AI will be playing a major role in radiology and image analysis. It could be an assistant to a radiologist. It will be an efficient tool. Similar will be the case with sectors like insurance and customer services,” he said.

Dileep tried to allay the fears of AI emerging to be a technology that will morally overpower society.

“It’s a failure of AI that it can be only an assistive technology. It’s yet to reach its full potential. In 10-20 years, we will be able to make software that functions and makes decisions like a human brain. Whenever a new technology comes, people are afraid. When printing technology arrives, many feared people will spend more time reading and there will be no time for communication between people,” he said.

To Harish’s questions on the rising concerns of AI eating into jobs and the larger social impact of the possibility, Dileep pointed out that jobs keep changing and even AI can teach people new jobs. He said the job losses incurred by AI could be compensated through AI itself and also social safety measures.

Dileep, despite all his optimism about the technology, batted for “some amount of regulations” in the field.

Harish then wanted a response from the AI scientist about the artistic community’s concerns over the technology replacing them.

“Art is about a connection between artists and the people who consume it. Art that is produced automatically will not be valued by people because there’s no human connection in it,” he said.