Most of us have seen the film the Terminator. It is a classic in the action genre, and despite some debatable logic in time travel, it is still one of the most enjoyable films of the 20th century. The entire premise (hopefully not a spoiler) revolves around trying to protect the mother of the child that would go on to lead the human resistance against robots who have turned against their human masters. When it was filmed back in 1984, that was just a far-fetched concept for a bit of fun. Yet, after the most influential revolution we have ever seen: that of information technology and Artificial Intelligence, the prospect of that happening, albeit in a less extreme form, is becoming more and more likely.
 
The impact of Artificial Intelligence on us is ubiquitous: from Alexa and Google Translate, to modelling investment patterns and disease heatmaps, and to social media algorithms and self-driving cars. Whilst the core principles of Artificial Intelligence, such as Regression and Classification algorithms, still lies very much associated to computer science, its applications are spreading far and wide into all fields such that it will affect political science and mental health, for example.
 
This article aims to give an overview on the impact of the rise in Artificial Intelligence on socioeconomic events. Will the defendant’s fate will depend on an algorithm? Will you have a job when you grow up? First off, some quick terms. Artificial Intelligence is the ability of computerised algorithms and machines to perform human tasks – such as image recognition, translation and decision-making. This is often the result of processing large amounts of data and building mathematical models to predict a result given certain parametres.
 
There are two major components of human ability: physical and intellectual. Ever since the Industrial revolution machines have far outcompeted humans in physical labour, from agricultural to manufacturing. The reason that mankind was still able to retain its role as “the master” is in that it maintained a secure edge in the intellectual and cognitive field. However, recent advantages in neural networks and Deep Learning have meant that in more and more intellectual tasks, machines are gaining a concrete edge. Invented over 1500 years ago in India, humans have spent millennia tackling chess, yet their input is negligible for the engine AlphaZero, who mastered chess in just 4 hours.
 
It seems impossible that something robotic can understand human emotions and perform cognitive tasks better than humans themselves. On the other hand, recent advances in biotechnology have shown that emotional and intellectual tasks are merely billions of biochemical signals between neurons in the brain. This makes it much easier to understand why machines can be so much better at processing this data that governs all human actions.
 
This impact of machines “outsmarting” humans is monumental. Even though machines have replaced manual labour for over two centuries now, it seems as if for each job taken by them, a new one is created. A carriage driver became a cab driver when the former proved redundant. This time, however, it is likely going to be different. Firstly, the changes are occurring incredibly fast. The positive competition between current tech giants (which you can read more about in other articles in this magazine) and rising entrepreneurial firms means that everyone is trying to innovate and improve. Secondly, the changes are very severe. It is extremely unlikely a Budgens cashier will be able to become a software engineer for the card-reader that replaces him. Even if he managed to do that, in another ten years he may well have to complete another career paradigm shift as even software engineers become unnecessary. The problem is thus: with the advent of developed Artificial Intelligence, a sizeable proportion of the population will become almost “irrelevant” in the job market in that machines will very quickly outcompete them, especially in more menial jobs. This is heightened at the point which most of the people targeted are also the most vulnerable in society (through no fault of their own): the poor, the disenfranchised and the uneducated.
 

 
But on a more meta sense, even if sufficient policies could mitigate those effects, AI could still bring the “fall of man” in the sense that man no longer stands on the apex of creation. That can exist in as little as legislative policies become more influenced by computerised simulations’ predictions rather than human experts. The scenario from the Terminator is still far-fetched, but it is not unlikely Artificial Intelligence could have a part in governing the lives of normal people. Even the best judges and politicians cannot process all the data to make the optimal decision, while it is comparatively easier for machine learning algorithms.
 
All this is bound to take time. The road for AI to take over our lives is full of challenges and obstacles for the technological industry. The main problem revolves around the stigma against Artificial Intelligence. People find it hard to trust something foreign and unfamiliar. While robots are capable of being much more accurate and reliable in surgery than doctors, most patients still struggle to cope with that concept and prefer a human surgeon. Furthermore, a wide array of jobs require more than what machines can bring. Nurses are far less likely going to be replaced by doctors in so far as they require skills of emotion and communication. Machines may be able to detect the exact biochemical signals from the patient's brain, and use deep learning to find the optimal response, but the societal and individual perceptions are just not the same.
 
The second major problem is that, as of now, Artificial Intelligence is extremely narrow: for example, chess AIs can play chess but cannot translate languages. The importance of this is that most human actions require a range of skills that specialised Artificial Intelligence will struggle to get. Further, individual tasks often require people to draw upon skills from other domains that they have absorbed previously, but where the AI has not been trained to do.
 
World renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking once told the BBC, "The development of full Artificial Intelligence could spell the end of the human race." It is inevitable that drastic changes will occur to the job market, particularly jobs which are repetitive and narrow. Developers and entrepreneurs still have challenges to overcome, and in the meantime, humanity may be able to adapt to this change. Despite the advantages, the livelihoods of the systemically and historically disenfranchised should still be taken into account.