Once, I went to our workshop for a meeting, and instead of calling a car from DiDi(Chinese Uber), I got a taxi from the taxi parking spot. The driver (50 years old or so) seemed quite excited and told me that he had driven around for hours to wait for a passenger.
“Why don’t you download a DiDi APP, so you can get orders from it.”
“I once used that APP, however, when there are few customers and a lot of drivers, drivers need to compete and act quickly to respond to the orders. I am old and I think it is unsafe for me to grab an order while driving. Of course, DiDi will assign the orders sometimes, but not many.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“One day, Didi will replace the taxi completely. Now many of my colleagues quit their job and work independently as a DiDi driver.”
“Yes, new things will always gradually takes the position of old ones. For example, some people are reluctant to do some work, but it doesn’t matter, artificial intelligent robots will replace us to do a lot of things in the future.”
“Oh, artificial intelligence will be a disaster for human beings. Take the driver as an example, we will be threatened by unmanned vehicles. The cars can drive themselves, and then what will we do？.”
His words made me lost in thought. A few weeks ago, I watched a movie called Humans, which described a world that AI robots (called synths) would be co-existed with human beings. In that movie, robots can do a lot of jobs, like selling products at a supermarket, taking care of the patient at the hospital, and even looking after a baby at home. It seemed that the robots make people live more comfortably, however, when the robots started to have feelings and emotions, a lot of conflicts and misunderstandings arose between human beings and robots due to some ethic questions, equality issues, and social values.
Also, I read an article published by The Economist recently, titled “Masters of the Universe” in which it said that “computers increasingly call the shots in financial markets”, and moreover, “new artificial intelligence programs are also writing their own investing rules, in ways their human masters only partly understand”. Of course, it also analyzed some concerns and potential risks for using computers and artificial intelligence in financial markets, however, the trend for the technology revolution is unstoppable.
So will AI robots threaten or replace human beings?
To solve current problems, like shortage of labors, management issues, increasing aging population, and environment issues, I think human beings need help from artificial intelligence. There is no doubt that artificial intelligence will be developed at an unprecedented speed in the future. However, we also need to notice that there is still a long way to go to design a real intelligent robot. The idea for artificial intelligence has been put up for a long time, but until now, we still have a lot of difficulties that need to be overcome. Also, with the development of technology, more attention should be paid to humanity and ethic and related researches should be conducted on these aspects.
Since the end of 2017, CFM starts to build a digital workshop. And by virtue of technology, CFM achieves "working with fewer people while double the capacity". With an aim to establish a smart and intelligent workshop, now CFM is still working on optimizing the digital management system and helping customers increase their working efficiency. For more info, please email to sales@china-flag-makers.com.
