Nowadays, humans are standing at the point where the growth rate of next 30 years is exponentially not linearly, which may grow five times faster than the average of progress of past because of artificial intelligence. Recently, I read an article called ‘The dawn of artificial intelligence’ from the economists. Artificial Intelligence has become a hottest topic in 21th century with rapidly development of technology, being discussed in latest hit show “Westworld” and event that computers now can play chess better than humans. The fast development of AI urges people to concern and worry about threat of AI if they replace human’s job even destroy our world in near future. The author poses a question at the beginning of the article saying how to ensure the artificial intelligence outweighs perils if it reshapes human’s nature. The author argues that humans should concern the threat of AI with superhuman cognitive capacity and interests that conflict with human beings. This dilemma has happened before during the French revolution and industrial revolution during the early 19th century when science and technology were trying to dominate society. However, I reckon that robots and technology may never replace humans because AI do not have emotion, culture and ethics which we have discussed in Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France” and Shelley’s “A Defense of Poetry”. Human have shared beliefs, ethics, love and beauty, while robots do not have human’s emotion and culture. People are concerning that AI will probably turf out whole regiment of workers, but it is almost impossible for them to replace poets, writers and decision makers because computers now do not have capacity to think like an ordinary human. In addition, robots can never understand the beauty of disorder things like Dadaism and surrealism we have discussed in the class, which against logic and rationality, but humans know how to enjoy it. Another reason that AI will not replace human is because our society have regulation and supervising system like the scene we have seen in the movie ‘Modern Times’ that president supervised workers anywhere. And all the laws and regulation are based on moral and ethics, so we should not worry about the threat of AI if we can regulate them well.

The author argues that scientists initially created robots in order to serve and help people, however if the situation had been reversed they would destroy humans. The author writes, “A car that drives itself better than its owner sounds like a progress; a car with its own ideas about where to go, less so.” In other words, the author argues that if AI does not follow human’s instruction and orders any more, it will become a serious issue. This reminds me of the importance of authority and law discussed in Burke’s ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, authority and law are valuable in maintaining terms of social hierarchy and power that have been handed down by our ancestors based on moral and ethics because they bring stability to community, otherwise AI would bring great harm if not governed by regulation. Consider, for instance, the power that AI brings to the apparatus of state security, in both autocracies and democracies. For example, AI can monitor billions of conversations and to pick out every citizen from the crowd by his voice or her face poses grave threats to liberty. Reminded of World War 1 happened in early 20th century, scientists and chemists use advanced technology to help patients, but large scale of chemistry weapon was used to demoralized, injure and kill people. This history experience told us the importance of moral and ethics standard.

We have discussed in the ‘Defense of Poetry’ that the ideal community should base on shared beliefs and love rather than rationality or science. In this article, the author mentioned that the scientists still could not find way to equip robots with emotions of humans, like autonomy, desire and humors. That is how humans distinguish robots. According to Nietzsche’s idea, there is no same leaf in the world and each individual have different ideas, while robots are same because they were made by same program. Also, when we watched the film “Ballet Mecanique”, although it is disorder and unreasonable, humans still can enjoy it as art. However, robots do not know how to read arts and disorder things. In Chaplin’s movie ‘Modern Times’, when Chaplin sang an improvised song which was nonsense, audience applause and felt happy. Robots could not improvise a song or a poet because their action were followed by a series program instruction. This emphasizes the importance of humanity and arts.

Worked Cited

Percy Shelley. ‘Defense of Poetry’. The Norton Anthology of World Literature Third edition, pp. 398-403

Edmund, Burke. “Reflection on French Revolution”. The Norton Anthology of World Literature Third edition, pp. 29-35

“The economists”.  ‘The dawn of artificial intelligence’