Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Chappie are all major blockbusters that reached a critical point of view about Artificial Intelligence, or AI. What we see in these major motion pictures are quite scary, intriguing, and just flat out insane. Is society ready for a step into a future we can’t properly prepare for? What if AI takes over our society and we virtually become useless? Well, these things are valid enough to worry about, but the question is, Should we?

Artificial Intelligence was a term coined around 1952 by a group of programmers that worked for tech giant IBM. They made a program that learned to play checkers on its own. This was just the beginning for what was yet to come in later years. Now we have programs that learn human functions. Just last year, Google’s DeepMind AI learned to walk; it was only given sensors, orientation, and a goal to go from point A to point B. It learned to walk and run, adjust to rough terrains as well as balance. The more it made mistakes, the more it learned, just as a normal human being would. Is this something life-threatening and morally wrong with our conventions as a society of human thinkers and makers and inventors? Or is this the start of a revolution in technology and a progression in science? The truth of the matter is, we have not even scratched the surface with AI.

There is a new type of computing that is getting improved as the years go by called Quantum Computing. As of now, there are no practical means of having a quantum computer at home due to some being as large as a bedroom. But, researchers believe there could be one just years away. So how does this relate to AI? Well, computer engineers believe that Quantum Computing is the next step that will unlock AI’s potential.  If we as a society get to that point, then the major worries may come, such as AI turning on us and making the world theirs, but until then we have small things to worry about.

AI has one worry about itself that is constantly on the average worker’s mind, can it take my job? And can it do it better? We already have conveyor belts being taken over by robots but they are preprogrammed to do these tasks, imagine one that could think and correct factorial and physical imperfections. This is definitely a future we should b worried about because of how many jobs could be lost. The other side to this is that our products could be of higher quality and top-tier construction.

So, should we or should we not be worried? That is for the future to decide.