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COVID-19: A Blessing In Disguise?
An Invisible Push for an AI Evolution Impending
Vinoth V V
5 min read
17 August 2020
Evolution seems to be too good to be just random. Be it Big-Bang or after, there is enough evidence to suspect a force invisible, one not-so-easily-comprehensible for the current level of ignorance of humans nor science at its present level, prompting the change.
Is COVID-19 such a push?
Often, average-joes, are stuck in our rat race to notice change until its changed, let alone the origins of it.
A careful look at human history reveals how none of the major changes could easily have passed off as random.
Discoveries such as igniting-fire-at-will, wheel, organized farming can’t be just accidental.
For one moment, let’s try thinking otherwise, but then the question arises how it was possible for those primitive brains to comprehend the science behind it.
Where did that ability come in the first place?
If that was mere accidental, why didn’t other mammals compete with those primitive brains for such discoveries? Was human accidentally special?
Nothing seems to be random. Some force has been guiding us. A force, despite all human resistance ensures that any and all changes take place, that too with absolute harmony in the end.
Worldwide implementation of democracy, industrialization, computerization, etc had their shares of resistance, yet were supposed to happen hence happened.
All evolutionary changes had had a trigger, Big-bang, meteors, floods, famine, poverty, plague, so on.
The Big Question - Is COVID-19 such a trigger?
We are at the brink of what is called the fourth industrial revolution, and as usual, a strong resistance is building up.
Fair enough, since the ever-doubting-human-mind is programmed to question everything that challenges its survival, which includes (since the inception of getting-paid-to-work) ‘jobs’. The fear of losing one’s livelihood always exists.
Be it the first (water and steam power to mechanize), second (electric power for mass production) or third (IT and electronics to automate production) industrial revolutions, none fared through smooth without lashings from human intellects and commons, yet they fared through. This too shall pass.
Did all those changes take place as ground work for what we are about to experience?
The next Big-Bang?
The stage is set! Machines are primed to think for us! They can do a lot more than just do our regular house-hold chores, entertain us and eliminate our inaccessibilities.
Machines have started to learn and they are learning fast, so fast that they can start thinking. Not as complex as us, who are too complex. But, they can analyze data in a manner much better focused than the-ever-distraced- distracted-human-mind with much better accuracy.
This means that the only brain on this that transformed exponentially, the special one, that is ‘yours’, can stop being worried about menial tasks and focus on life’s higher purposes.
Now, does that not sound like a plan? Yes!
Artificial Iintelligence (AI), though a buzz word, is frowned upon by many, thanks to those movies where AI with its army of robots take over the world. But, did those movies end in AI’s victory or humans’?
Ring a bell different now?
Despite all its advances, AI is still ‘ONLY’ lurking around the area of assisting humans in thinking. To think like human is too far far-fetched. And to reach a stage where AI takes over humans and enslave them is highly improbable in the foreseeable future.
Not to forget, in order to achieve that it has to compete with humans, the same humans with that special-accidentally-evolved brain! Would it be a mute spectator?
In this state of confusion, while both for and against AI is in a tug of war, sneaks in a micro-organism, one unknown, hence Novel, questioning our current level of knowledge and progress in all fields, not just limited to medicine, science and finance.
Look at the extend of its damage, not even the world’s most developed countries could cope.
Of all the disruptions it has caused, one very interesting that COVID-19 shook is something quite fundamental for humans; the human ‘touch’.
The handshakes, hugs and kisses, quintessential for human emotional connect is disappearing fast, right in front of our eyes. Social distancing is the outcome.
Is Covid-19 accidental or is that a prompt to push us ahead?
For one moment, just one moment, imagine, had the virus appeared after we had mastered AI and the sciences associated, would it have had the same destructive impact that it has had? Certainly not.
A few clicks and that Uber-smart machine would use its power to do all possible permutations and computations to come up with a prescription for eliminating the deadly virus in no time.
We can treat AI as a known enemy or an unknown friend, either way it is going to be part of our future.
Can it make our lives better? Yes.
Would it enslave us human? Don’t know.
Would we let it happen? Definitely not.
We have evolved to be superior, not by chance but choice. We are because we are supposed to be. To err is human and erred we have many. Errs never stopped us instead empowered us.
AI is the future. It is designed to take us to the best version of us ever. The need of the hour is to embrace it wholeheartedly and upgrade ourselves.
Let’s roll out the carpet, let the drums roll and welcome it with all our heart.