TECH

Domain of computers over humans "is almost an inevitability"
"We will, little by little, freely hand over the overwhelming majority of decision-making power to automatisms and computers," said David Carvalhão, adding that this is a gradual transition, already underway, of which "most people are not conscious".David Carvalhão, partner in the technology company Vigil365, spoke about the 6th edition of the Talk a Bit conference, held today at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP)."[Computers and automatons] are not going to take the power of humans by force, as is usually anticipated by science fiction, but rather because we are creating a society in such a complex way that it will overcome the cognitive ability of humans to manage it" , defended.While he believes that humans still control the development of technology, he believes there are cases where such control is not absolute.An example of this is 'deep learning', a type of artificial intelligence in which the decisions made are not defined at the outset, but evolve over time, which is used in applications with 'high human impact', such as autonomous cars or investment in stock market."We do not know how this concept works, we just know that in most cases it gives the result we want and that this result is statistically satisfactory," he said, questioning: "Can we say that we control something that we do not know exactly how it works?"According to the electrotechnical engineer, what differentiates the current technological revolution from the previous ones is the replacement of human activity, not only at the level of physical work, but also of cognitive work."Any instance where decision-making can be done more quickly or economically efficiently will have a very high impact," he said, assuming more concern about the use of this technology in the short term in military applications."It is already subject of discussion and experimentation the creation of robots robots, completely autonomous, that decide for themselves whether or not to take life to a human being," he said.
Also for André Lago, one of the organizers of Talk a Bit, technology is moving "at an ever-accelerating pace to get as close to human behavior as possible, rapidly increasing the number of tasks in which they can be replaced by machines."In this movement, "we see machines replacing the work of humans, as already happens in the call centers and the service stations," he said, adding that in the future, professions related to teaching and medicine could also be performed by computers."I believe that, in the very near future, driving will begin to be replaced by completely autonomous vehicles and that, very soon, the human being will become an interplanetary species," said André Lago.For the organizer, the health area is one that, at a social level, will benefit most from technological developments.Recent advances in disease detection, prevention and treatment, which allow for a gradual decrease in the cost associated with these techniques and thus facilitate access for more people to quality medical care and treatment, support this view, he said.Talk a Bit, which came out in 2013, is organized annually by finalist students of Software Engineering at FEUP. It aims to share and discuss current topics related to the social impact of technology.


Lusa