At the heart of the development of AI appears to be a search for perfection. And it could be just as dangerous to humanity as the one that came from philosophical and pseudoscientific ideas of the 19th and early 20th centuries and led to the horrors of colonialism, world war and the Holocaust. Instead of a human ruling master race, we could end up with a machine one.

If this seems extreme, consider the anti-human perfectionism that is already central to the labour market. Here, AI technology is the next step in the premise of maximum productivity that replaced individual craftmanship with the factory production line. These massive changes in productivity and the way we work created opportunities and threats that are now set to be compounded by a fourth industrial revolution in which AI further replaces human workers.

Several recent research papers predict that, within a decade, automation will replace half of the current jobs. So, at least in this transition to a new digitised economy, many people will lose their livelihoods. Even if we assume that this new industrial revolution will engender a new workforce that is able to navigate and command this data-dominated world, we will still have to face major socioeconomic problems. The disruptions will be immense and need to be scrutinised.

The ultimate aim of AI, even narrow AI which handles very specific tasks, is to outdo and perfect every human cognitive function. Eventually, machine-learning systems may well be programmed to be better than humans at everything.

What they may never develop, however, is the human touch empathy, love, hate or any of the other self-conscious emotions that make us human. Thats unless we ascribe these sentiments to them, which is what some of us are already doing with our Alexas and Siris.

The obsession with perfection and hyper-efficiency has had a profound impact on human relations, even human reproduction, as people live their lives in cloistered, virtual realities of their own making. For instance, several US and China-based companies have produced robotic dolls that are selling out fast as substitute partners.

One man in China even married his cyber-doll, while a woman in France married a robo-man, advertising her love story as a form of robo-sexuality and campaigning to legalise her marriage. Im really and totally happy, she said. Our relationship will get better and better as technology evolves. There seems to be high demand for robot wives and husbands all over the world.

In the perfectly productive world, humans would be accounted as worthless, certainly in terms of productivity but also in terms of our feeble humanity. Unless we jettison this perfectionist attitude towards life that positions productivity and material growth above sustainability and individual happiness, AI research could be another chain in the history of self-defeating human inventions.

Already we are witnessing discrimination in algorithmic calculations. Recently, a popular South Korean chatbot named Lee Luda was taken offline. She was modelled after the persona of a 20-year-old female university student and was removed from Facebook messenger after using hate speech towards LGBT people.

Meanwhile, automated weapons programmed to kill are carrying maxims such as productivity and efficiency into battle. As a result, war has become more sustainable. The proliferation of drone warfare is a very vivid example of these new forms of conflict. They create a virtual reality that is almost absent from our grasp.

But it would be comical to depict AI as an inevitable Orwellian nightmare of an army of super-intelligent Terminators whose mission is to erase the human race. Such dystopian predictions are too crude to capture the nitty gritty of artificial intelligence, and its impact on our everyday existence.

Societies can benefit from AI if it is developed with sustainable economic development and human security in mind. The confluence of power and AI which is pursuing, for example, systems of control and surveillance, should not substitute for the promise of a humanised AI that puts machine learning technology in the service of humans and not the other way around.

To that end, the AI-human interfaces that are quickly opening up in prisons, healthcare, government, social security and border control, for example, must be regulated to favour ethics and human security over institutional efficiency. The social sciences and humanities have a lot to say about such issues.

One thing to be cheerful about is the likelihood that AI will never be a substitute for human philosophy and intellectuality. To be a philosopher, after all, requires empathy, an understanding of humanity, and our innate emotions and motives. If we can programme our machines to understand such ethical standards, then AI research has the capacity to improve our lives which should be the ultimate aim of any technological advance.

But if AI research yields a new ideology centred around the notion of perfectionism and maximum productivity, then it will be a destructive force that will lead to more wars, more famines and more social and economic distress, especially for the poor. At this juncture of global history, this choice is still ours.

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Artificial intelligence must not be allowed to replace the imperfection of human empathy - The Conversation UK

Nijeer Parks was bewildered when he was arrested and taken into custody in February 2019. Apparently, hed been accused of shoplifting and attempting to hit a police officer with a car at a Hampton Inn, as the New York Times reported. But Woodbridge, New Jersey, where the crime had taken place, was 30 miles from his home, and Parks had neither a car nor a drivers license at the time, according to NBC News. Court documents indicated that he had no idea how hed been implicated in a crime he knew he didnt commit until he discovered that the case against him was based solely on a flawed facial-recognition match. According to a December report by the Times, this was the third-known instance of a wrongful arrest caused by facial recognition in the U.S. All three of those victims were Black men.

Algorithms failed Parks twice: First, he was mistakenly identified as the suspect; then, he was robbed of due process and jailed for 10 days at the recommendation of a risk assessment tool used to assist pretrial release decisions. These tools have been adopted by courts across the country despite evidence of racial bias and a 2018 letter signed by groups like the ACLU and NAACP cautioning against their use. At one point, Parks told the Times, he even considered pleading guilty. The case was ultimately dropped, but hes now suing the Woodbridge Police Department, the city of Woodbridge, and the prosecutors involved in his wrongful arrest.

These are the costs of algorithmic injustice. Were approaching a new reality, one in which machines are weaponized to undermine liberty and automate oppression with a pseudoscientific rubber stamp; in which opaque technology has the power to surveil, detain, and sentence, but no one seems to be held accountable for its miscalculations.

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U.S. law enforcement agencies have embraced facial recognition as an investigative aid in spite of a 2018 study from MIT that discovered software error rates ranging from 0.8% for light-skinned men to 34.7% for dark-skinned women. In majority-Black Detroit, the police chief approximated a 96% error rate in his departments software last year (though the company behind the software told Vice they dont keep statistics on the accuracy of its real-world use), but he still refuses a ban.

Artificial intelligence (AI) works by supplying a computer program with historical data so it can deduce patterns and extrapolate from those patterns to make predictions independently. But this often creates a feedback loop of discrimination. For example, so-called predictive policing tools are purported to identify future crime hot spots and optimize law enforcement resource allocation, but because training data can reflect racially disparate levels of police presence, they may merely flag Black neighborhoods irrespective of a true crime rate. This is exactly what Minority Report warned us about.

Princeton University sociologist Ruha Benjamin has sounded the alarm about a new Jim Code, a reference to the Jim Crow laws that once enforced segregation in the U.S. Others have alluded to a tech-to-prison pipeline, making it crystal clear that mass incarceration isnt going away its just being warped by a sophisticated, high-tech touch.

Thats not to say that AI cant be a force for good. It has revolutionized disease diagnosis, helped forecast natural disasters, and uncovered fake news. But the misconception that algorithms are some sort of infallible silver bullet for all our problems technochauvinism, as data journalist Meredith Broussard put it in her 2018 book has brought us to a place where AI is making high-stakes decisions that are better left to humans. And in the words of Silicon Valley congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA), the technological illiteracy of most members of Congress is embarrassing, precluding effective governance.

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Artificial Intelligence has immense potential catering to various aspects of the world be it economic, environment related, social or anything for that matter. AI has made taking decisions based on data easier than ever. Machines with deep learning capabilities have changed our lives for better. With this being said, one of the hottest topics that has garnered attention from across the globe is Can Artificial Intelligence aid in achieving Sustainable Development Goals? Yes, it can! Infact, there are sectors that have already been using this advanced technology of AI in meeting their goals. Some areas where this has proven successful are

The importance of education can just not be put into words. Not only does it open door to a plethora of career options to choose from, but also grooms you as a person. Gone are the days when getting educated required the presence of someone to guide you through. But today, education is far more accessible thanks to Artificial Intelligence. Getting educated without human teachers is probably one of the best innovations AI has come up with in the education sector. It cannot have got any better for the visually challenged students for the sole reason that they too can fulfil their desire of being educated with the help of voice assistants.

AI is also capable of monitoring the students performance from time to time. Recommending content based on the students past experience is yet another area that AI focuses on. All in all, the future is set to see more number of students getting trained by AI powered machine tutors rather than human tutors.

No matter which country you live in, this sector has a unique importance. It is just not possible to imagine life without this sector. Artificial intelligence can help in detecting diseases in plants and also target weeds. Farmers are now using AI forecasting models to predict upcoming weather patterns, thus enabling them to make better decisions.

Needless to say, this is that one sector that people can never get tired of praising. And when the world is shook by a pandemic like the 2020 virus, then the efforts put in by this sector needs no special mention. Since the data pertaining to the healthcare sector is insanely huge, Artificial Intelligence has the ability to collect and process this data for faster treatment. Coming up with technologies to check whether the person is cancerous or not, to estimate the probability of a person to develop cancer, to name a few are taking shape because of AI. India is marching towards an AI driven economy with every passing day. It has partnered with Microsoft to eradicate preventable blindness using an AI-enabled portable eye-scanning device that helps detect retinal diseases. In addition to all of this, AI is being used to deal with the cyber-security attacks in this sector as well.

The havoc created by disasters needs no special mention. AI promises to be a saviour here as well. It plays a pivotal role in minimizing the damage caused due to disasters. Artificial intelligence helps improve dam and barrage water release to minimize the risks.

The above are just few of the many areas where AI has worked wonders. AI has huge potential to serve a lot of sectors. If we come together and put Artificial Intelligence into its best use, then a better society awaits all of us in the years to come.

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Artificial Intelligence and Sustainable Development Goals - Analytics Insight

TORONTO, Feb. 02, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Skinopathy, a Canadian medical company founded in 2020, has filed a provisional patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) technology that will help guide surgeons when performing skin cancer excisions.

Healthcare practitioners will be able to use the AI technology which determines, pixel by pixel, the boundaries of cancerous skin tissue by simply taking a picture with their smartphones. The AR technology will then provide surgeons with an overlay of those boundaries through the screen.

Next level healthcare Cancerous skin tissue can sometimes extend beyond the measurable lesion and is typically unseen to even the most eagle-eyed surgeon.

That is why some surgeons choose to be overly cautious and remove more skin than might be necessary to prevent the need for further surgery, which can lead to visible scarring and other disfigurements. Conversely, it is possible that cancerous tissue remains following an excision due to the vagaries of the human body, quality-of-life considerations, or experience of the surgeon. This can potentially lead to continued growth and additional excisions in the future.

Once ready, surgeons will have access to cutting-edge technology that will lead to more informed medical decisions and significantly reduce the hardships felt by the patient and the strain levied on the healthcare system.

This will revolutionize skin cancer treatment, says Alexander Shevchenko, Lead Engineer at Skinopathy. We are providing surgeons with an additional skin cancer fighting tool they can carry in their pockets every day.

Preventing advanced stages of skin cancer Skin cancer is more prevalent than colon, lung, breast, and prostate cancers combined and typically present in very unspectacular ways.

Moles, skin tags, and rashes are rarely viewed as causes for concern and are often dismissed until the discomfort becomes greater than the hassle of seeing a doctor. But it is during that time of latency where dangerous conditions can fester and become deadly. When people finally take action, they are often subject to long wait times or need to travel hundreds (if not thousands) of kilometres to access physicians in a major urban centre.

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Using this technology, people will be able to take pictures of their skin lesion and get an immediate and accurate analysis that will advise on the severity of their condition and provide online access to healthcare practitioners in a matter of days, sometimes even hours.

This is a tremendous milestone for skin cancer, says Dr. Colin Hong, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Skinopathy. We are using technology to streamline the medical bureaucracy to ensure no one slips through the cracks.

It now takes weeks, sometimes months, to see a skin cancer specialist, and during that time cancerous tissue can grow rapidly and spread to other organs. Making matters worse is the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which has added more delays and obstacles.

Geographically agnostic technologySkinopathy is using the same kind of technology used for the Re-Captcha security feature found on many websites. However, instead of using AI to determine the difference between a fire hydrant and a bus, Skinopathy is using it to determine the miniscule differences between a mole and a cancerous lesion.

Using real-world images taken by physicians and beta users using their smartphones, the Skinopathy prototypes have yielded 87% accuracy for nine different skin conditions, such as keratosis, and performed even more impressively for basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma with accuracy rates ranging from 87% to 96%.

We are very excited about these results, says Dr. Rakesh Joshi, Lead Data Scientist at Skinopathy. There are very subtle nuances on how skin lesions present on the skin, and our models are able to detect the smallest of variances.

Since the technology being developed is geographically agnostic, it can be deployed anywhere in the world and bring needed medical care to under-serviced regions. You can learn more about the technology here.

Skin cancer facts and statsThe Canadian Skin Cancer Foundation states that 1 in 3 cancers diagnosed worldwide is skin cancer and that they outnumber lung, breast, prostate, and colon cancers combined.

Data from the Public Health Agency of Canada suggests the costs associated with skin and subcutaneous tissue diseases was over 2 Billion Dollars in 2010.

Research suggests there is a skin cancer epidemic in the elderly.

About Skinopathy Founded in 2020, Skinopathy is a medical company creating Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), and automation technology that will ensure people and healthcare practitioners receive convenient, reliable, and State-Of-The-Art skin cancer mitigation tools. Its first service, GetSkinHelp.com, is already helping patients connect with specialists through its virtual platform.

ContactKeith LooCo-Founder & Chief Executive Officer(833) 272-7546 x700keith@skinopathy.com

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Skinopathy Files Provisional Patent for Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality Powered Technology that will Guide Skin Cancer Surgeries - Yahoo...