Humans should Learn from AI - The Human Perspective

The context of this write-up comes from me reading this book called “Life 3.0” these days. A book written by Max Tegmark.
Clarification: This article is NOT about those already existing articles on the idea of AI acting as a tutor (tacit knowledge transfer kinda stuff)

The book is the author’s take on How AI (artificial Intelligence) and even ML (Machine Learning) for that sake have so much blended into our lives and how the future would look like with AI and ML making progressive strides every single day.
Complementing my reading with some example videos of seeing AI in action both fascinated me and inspired me to write an article here! This article is no rocket science; I won’t be using any IT mumbo-jumbos here. So, you can read it without any hesitation! Let’s get started!

Background

This is a video from 2015 where Google’s DeepMind AI taught itself how to play (& win) at brick-breaker.

The only objective this AI was given was to maximize the score. The surprising part is at this moment the AI knew nothing about this game, neither the bricks, the puck, nor that ball! After about 4 hours, not only did it gained expertise in the game, but also found a way to successfully maximize the score with less effort!

The only point with this example which I am trying to make is that, that the AI was given an objective and no matter what it had to complete it! This is, my fellow reader, the basic crux of Artificial Intelligence - giving it an objective and letting it learn! There are many more such examples of these AI models doing what not — defeating chess champions, defeating Go champions, an auto-parking Tesla, etc.

Now coming to the title, what exactly should we learn from them?

Focus

AI models are given goals to achieve, and they achieve it no matter what, they take their time, but they don’t stop unless their objective of achieving that goal is complete!
Take us humans for comparison - as per a recent (well not so recent, actually) study, only 8% of people actually achieve their goals! Why? Simple! We (well, at least the majority of us) lack clear, defined goals! If at all we have a goal, we lack the focus to work upon them!
Looking at that notification ‘one last time’ every minute, doom-scrolling, just sitting idle all the time thinking I will do this-I will do that, excessive planning, lack of risk taking our some of the factors I think, don’t let us focus on our goals!

Determination

Once an AI machine gets on to a task, all they know is that task and nothing else. No matter how many times they fail, they never give up, they keep on trying (and even different ways to complete the task if some method doesn’t work out!). I hope you know the story of King Bruce and the Spider!

If I was to give that story a modern makeover, the following would be my 21st Century plot:
King Bruce = Humans
Spider = Artificial Intelligence

Motivation

Having a goal is good, but what’s the use of it if you don’t get motivated by it each day? Now, you might be thinking that what is an AI model’s motivation?
Hmm...this is a tough question for me; Let me give it a try:

“So, AI is being instructed by humans to achieve a desired objective (by programming that objective into the model).
Maybe, humans would even program (ask) the AI to achieve that objective as efficiently as possible and to keep on trying until that efficiency is reached.
We know that computer programs always (most of the time) complete the task given to them, which if not completed will disappoint us humans!
So yes, here I conclude, Humans getting satisfied by results is AI’s Motivation!”
I’ve found AI’s motivation…go find yours now so that you can achieve your goal!

and I am done…

I don’t deny that we as a human race don’t work or are inefficient (else, how would we even think of AI in the first place!); I also very well know the fact that we can’t replicate the working style of an AI model because, obviously, humans are not machines. Our brains are not meant to function like a machine. Our memory (especially the subconscious one), biases, our ability to think or not think, our laziness are few of the traits that differentiate us humans from AI models / machines.
But by ignoring or not getting inspired from these qualities, which even an inanimate program (AI) can imbibe, is I believe an important and a wonderful thing which we are missing out on!

I am not some motivational writer; as I mentioned, this was a simple thought that cropped up in my mind while reading that book! [I am still reading that book though at it’s too lengthy, but fun ;)] After which, I just thought of why not pen this simple thought down so that another u̶s̶e̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ useful article gets here on medium :-)

anyway, let me know your thought on my write-up above!