“Alexa, read today’s schedule for me and reserve the barbershop that I went to last month for me tonight.” 

“OK, what can I do for you else?” 

“Regulate the room temperature, it’s a little too cold in the morning.”

“All set.”

This is the life of people in the future, maybe in 10 years or less, in which everyone has his or her own AI assistant to help them manage daily business. Modern technology has developed to an unimaginable extent. AI, artificial intelligence, being the most innovative one of them, is controversial and largely discussed by scientists, politicians, and philosophers due to its duplicity. Some people argue for its transformative power, while the others question its moral principles. To my opinion, AI will indeed reshape people’s life both positively and negatively, but should be developed under proper regulation. 

Along with the civilization progress, the way to evaluate innovations needs to adapt to modern environment. The advanced innovation, such as AI, should be recognized as both constructive and destructive power. Take self-driving car as an example. Self-driving car facilitates people’s life by freeing drivers’ hands. Nowadays, workers who drive to the workplace spend too much time on the way because of traffic jam and long-distance driving. If self-driving car becomes prevalent in the market, the time could be saved up for other more important business. Also, self-driving car ensures higher safety of the passengers. The driving system is pre-programmed so that it is impossible to violate the traffic rules. The problems of speeding, driving after drinking, jumping the red light, or driving without license could all be avoided successfully. The development of self-driving car produces a better driving environment that will certainly reduce the incidence of road accidents. On the other hand, self-driving car creates a moral dilemma for people to ponder on. Similar to famous Trolley Problem, when there is an inevitable accident, the self-driving car will face two choices: either keeps driving forward and strikes the pedestrian who is walking across the road or curves sharply to the sidewalk and injures the driver. How should the self-driving car cope with the situation like this? The programmers are able to code the traffic laws into the system, but they are unable to expect every emergency situation. Unlike human beings who are emotional and thoughtful and can take responsibilities for their actions, AI system behind self-driving car lacks personal character. AI analyzes the data and code but not emotions and thoughts. Even for many philosophers, the issue relating to moral dilemma, like Trolley Problem, remains unsolved and disputed. Depending on what norm should scientists set up self-driving car’s reaction? To save more lives? What if the one self-driving car chooses to hurt is an influential celebrity whose injury or death affects thousands of people’s life. Scientists still face many challenges in terms of stability and maturity of AI technology to prevent unintended consequences in the future. 

The development of technology is unstoppable, thus it is extremely important to find the solutions to balance innovations and inhumanity. First, the government needs to establish certain agreed norms or rules of the programming of AI system to regulate the its conducts. Many living examples show that AI often misunderstands people’s instructions due to insufficient context. The AI products cannot be largely promoted in the market during its infancy because scientists do not fully master the skills to detect and correct the AI program or to predict the consequences. Second, not every field has to apply the technology of AI. The article “How the Enlightenment Ends” mentions Alpha Go, an AI program that has won the world champion in chess, which illustrates a major difference in mode of thinking between human beings and robots. Alpha Go knows only one purpose: to win. However, the real human player enjoys the progress to figure out his opponent’s thought and learn new strategies from it. If AI supplants people in everything, people will gradually lose the ability to think and the nature of being a human. As the result, the development of AI should be restricted and slowed down somehow.

The rapid development in technology is generally positive that it brings more convenience to people’s daily life. However, the scientists have to consider more about its side effects and take more responsibilities of their products when something goes wrong. The true essence behind the modern innovations is to seek the balance between scientific advance and humanity.