Does AI threaten human communication?

This Post Written By 
Darren Rangel

“You know… I can feel the fear that you carry around with you and I wish there was something I could do to help you let go of it because…if you could…I don’t think you’d feel so alone anymore. “

This is said by Samantha to Theodore, in the movie The lovely man , Theodore ( play by Joaquin Phoenix), has fallen in love with Samantha - an AI operating system  ( voice - Scarlett Johansson). 

Will there ever be a time in which we become too dependent on technology for basic human interaction? We already see an increase in social anxiety disorders and a cultural increase in favoritism towards the non-face-to-face forms of communication (texting, instant messaging, email etc)  Should we be concerned with this seemingly irreversible trend to distance ourselves from ‘real’ human interaction?

 Can technology one day ‘understand’ and predict the ‘perfect’ response for any given dialogue?

We are all familiar with Google Translate, but how much do you really know about the underlyings of the software? 

Did you know that it implements a method known as Deep learning? 

Deep Learning is a process of imitation that occurs within the data processing of A.I.  The numerous layers of neural networks provide an intricate and extensive method of organization, archival and retrieval. The large amounts of data in these networks is processed and matched with an algorithm which helps the computer learn how to recognize words and sentences.  Google has already implemented this in a great number of its applications and services such as Google Cloud Video and Google Assistant Speech Recognition.

Deep learning is also very closely related to Neural Machine Translation, another form of A.I. that uses patterns to become progressively accurate. This accuracy can be attributed to the millions of documents that have already undergone the translation process by humans. Google computers scan the documents in search for statistically significant patterns. These patterns contribute to the entire correction process of other documents. This in turn makes the computer program highly knowledgable about how humans use language. The computer learns. 

            Do you consider Google’s Artificial Intelligence to be a threat or assistance to communication and translation?  In the 2013 Drama film, Her; a man falls in love with his highly sophisticated operating system and begins to prefer it to real people. 

Will we ever see such a mass preference for technology in our lifetime?