If data is the new oil, Artificial Intelligence is the new drill

Self-driving cars and service and cleaning robots are now a reality. AI, is expanding and the fear the millions losing jobs is growing. Its entry into the realms of future combat and 21st century warfare is, however, staggeringly frightful. Once hi-tech weapons like guided missile systems make their own AI-based decisions, there are endless possibilities for mistakes and massacres. In a nuclear scenario, billions could be held hostage or exterminated by faulty computer codes. Advanced facial recognition technology, has been catapulted to a kind of Big Brother than even George Orwell ever would have dreamt of.
Humanity will be in dire straits, with the emergence of such superintelligence that surpasses human-level intelligence in a broad array of areas. AI has created machines that can learn and think, provoking a new arms race. If data is the new oil, then AI is the new drill and to extend this analogy, malfunctioning algorithms are the new pollution.
- Farouk Araie, South Africa