Inside The Mind Of An Artificial Intelligence Machine

Recently I had a revelation surrounding the technological advances that was being done in the field of AI.

One of my best friends lost his sister due to cancer. She was only 36 and one of the most beautiful souls. Needless to say him and his entire family were devestated after her struggle came to completion!

As if this had not been enough, he was confronted by the fact that while he was there by his sister's side, everyday, for the last month of her struggle his fiance was having an affair.

Anyone ever see the movie 50/50? Well his story draws many parallels.

My mate was shattered and even though I couldn't be there for him during this time, because he moved to New Zealand. I regularly tried to stay in touch through video calling.

It was during a particular video chat where he told me about a company out in New Zealand that's breaking ground with researching AI. They were able to create an autonomous counselling system, where you can have a conversation with a "robot" about personal problems, mental health struggles, grief, depression, sexual assaults etc.

This project is in beta and my friend had volunteerd to help them test it, he found that the process helped him to deal with general anxiety and stress which helped him to focus more on mourning and closure.

The premise is simple: When you speak to a non-human element about your feelings and emotions you are far more likely to 'open-up' because individuals do not feel judged as you would when sharing something with another human even if it is a stranger who has an oath to keep what you say confidential like a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Also it is possible for an autonomous counsellor to be more truthful and honest when giving advice, exercises, mantras, perspectives and opinions during a treatment because you woll be less inclined to feel like the advice came from a place of judgement.

The system has been used in test cases with army veterans who suffer from PTSD with great results.

The fact is that even if we do not trust AI's yet, we are designed to feel more comfortable dealing with AI technology interface systems, and this is already evident as in the Amazon image.

When we do shopping at our local supermarket there might be all sorts of judgements that can male us doubt whether or not we should make a purchase, like for someone who is overweight and need a size 4XL pair of jeans, sanitary pads or fungal foot cream.

You can already sniff how psychology is going to be at the forefront of AI and many human elements will be removed from the sales process because it can deter sales...

In the end we will be seeing this technology taking over retail and commercial spaces and the question is will we become over-reliant on the machines just like we are of current technologies?

Some sources have predicted a total 5 million jobs to be lost by 2020. As you can imagine as the technology is driven by development, acquiring a decent ai system will become not only affordable but also inexpensive.

Where AI will take us we will soon find out, so keep an eye on this space.

Thanks for taking time to read this post!

Upvote & Resteem my post if you deemed it a good read.