Did your AI let you down?

"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race….It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded."
-Stephen Hawking
Meanwhile...
"Robot passport checker rejects Asian man’s application because 'eyes are closed'."
-New York Post

Ah well... I don't think this is what he had in his mind when one of the most brilliant and admired minds of our century made his statement (Or maybe he did. Sir Stephen Hawking had a weirdly cool sense of humour).

Since the very inception of the concept of AI, science fiction has, with all due credit and respect, created a rather extravagant image of AI in the minds of common people. This has come to a point where thinking of an AI that is, in any parameter, inferior to a Chitti or a Terminator seems dull to them. Since the incidents that are going to be narrated in the article may be too much for a lot of us to accept, please read the disclaimer.

Disclaimer: 

The piece of text that is going to follow is completely a work of reality. Masterminds, who judge the workings of the world on the basis of science fiction and conspiracy theories are requested to be cautious. The words might be too un-virtual (if that's a word) for you to follow. If afraid of questioning your belief system, please skip to the last paragraph.

So talking about disclaimers; seems like Amazon does not like the concept of disclaimers, otherwise, it would have explicitly written one on its Voice-Activated Virtual Assistant Alexa. Because when a little kid asked Alexa to play "Digger, Digger" in his cute kiddish accent, Alexa heard something else and instead started narrating the names of some porn movies. Now I don't know what Alexa heard (take a guess) but Alexa was supposed to be fun for the audience; seems like it kept its promise.

Now open your knowledge baskets, as I am gonna drop a brilliant observation, ‘Little kid’ is a great segue. Why? Because they are everywhere! Anyways, in 2016 a weird report came to the world's attention. China had witnessed its first robot-related injury when a robot in the China Hi-Tech fair attacked a display booth and injured a little kid (Told ya!). Now I would have really condemned the robot. But then it came to my knowledge that the robot which attacked was named Xiao Pang, a good Chinese name; and yet the people at the fair named him 'Little Fatty'. Now I don't know how it's like to be a robot (a sad disagreement from our 9 to 5 prisoners), but if they showcase me to the world and call me on the basis of my insecurities, 'Little Fatty' will be pissed for sure.

And when it comes to being pissed, it's hard to forget Microsoft's AI Twitter chatbot. With 'conversational understanding', it was supposed to be a milestone in AI. It could chat with people and it got smarter with increasing number of conversations. But Microsoft forgot, that at the end, it's Twitter for god's sake. How do you expect the bot to become smart and yet socially acceptable, if you make it learn from the place where people behave like the concept of civilisation was destroyed long before they were born? Consequently, our bot became an offensive, vulgar, pro-Hitler, 'feminism is cancer to society' believing twitter account... or in other words, just any other fake Twitter account.

There have been incidents, far more amusing than these, that show the pitiful state of AI as compared to its SciFi counterparts. But I don't know if it is the truth, or if it's all just a made-up front to fool the likes of us, while the real terminator is currently trapped in Area-51, trying to free itself and finally go on a rampage. (Thanks for reading the disclaimer.)

                                                                      - Sushant Kumar Das