Digitalisation and artificial intelligence

Digitalisation has made a paradigm shift in our thought process, the way we act, the way we live our lives

PART-I

The other day I was trying to reset my password in one of the search engines. While going through the process, an interesting step had to be completed which was typing an alpha numeric code to check whether the requester is a person or a robot. A machine testing the identity of that individual is interesting, isn't it?  Marvin Minsky, the scientist who pioneered the popularisation of artificial intelligence died at the age of eighty eight due to cerebral haemorrhage. He established artificial intelligence laboratory in MIT which conducted the works on voice recognition, robotics, learning neural machine etc which formalised the digital world. It is indeed shocking to know the pioneer of the learning machine died of cerebral stroke! The level of digitalisation has really taken us to a level where we can't even think to spend to stay a day without having interconnected devices. The smart phones are available almost in every ones hands with this being all important device rather than just another gadget, laptops are now almost a domestic household appliance which is frequently being used like other electronic items including TV, refrigerator etc. There are social networking sites for which we keep ourselves updated about our near and dear ones both in country and overseas through various apps like viber, FaceTime, Whatsapp and other messenger apps. For making a choice among different alternatives like hotel reservations, doctor appointment, buying a concert or flight ticket etc, we go to specific sites available in the net.  The online shopping be it for daily necessities or instant food is now defining the new era of shopping by just going to Amazon, FlickR, EBay etc. Now a days, if we want to know specific details of a subject, we actually don't need to go to libraries and go through volumes of books and encyclopaedia by spending numerous hours, we rather Google it from our smart phones and bingo we get all the details readily available instantaneously.  Bitcoin probably will help shape the future of banking industry and companies like Apple, Google etc may become a popular mode for transaction in the coming days posing challenges to conventional brick and mortar banks.  It’s true that digitalisation has made a paradigm shift in our thought process, the way we act, the way we live our lives et al. Indeed we have become an integral part of the global village.  What is trending in New York, Paris, London, Dubai or any part of the world now has become a household agenda for us. There is a gradual shift in the social membrane. It's a long way from the early 90s when in the office by the word automation we meant  having couple of 286, 386 or pentium personal computers which were primarily replacement of electronic typewriters. From there on gradual shift to Local Area Network (LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN) to satellite communication through various modes including submarine cable. We had gone through scary moments just before the turn of the century about what may happen in the event of turn over of century itself in our computers! Billions of dollars were spend on presumed fallout of potential system crashes due to a glitch called Y2K. I still remember our activities in control/command center from the afternoon of 31st December till morning of 1st January in the year 2000 watching Midnight bells in unmanned Pacific Islands till midnight struck in Dhaka. That was a Ramadan, so clearly remember that evening. We had to bring in two satellite phones with special permission from Regulators in case the presumed fear turns to reality! The rapid growth in communication technology has brought the world in our finger tips with the smart phone or tablets. The school going kids now can do more than the entire command center's activities during the Y2K. Certainly the information technology has improved the productivity/ efficiency whereby bringing in convenience and comforts to our lives. However, it is happening at a very dear cost where we are losing out softer sides of human values. We exchange mails with the colleague sitting just next to cubicle but hardly whom we get to meet, let alone know about the personal details of that individual.  Truly speaking, where have all our human values gone? This value system is what has differentiated the Homo sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom. Gradual deviation from basic human values may soon converge us to the level of a machine. We are now identified by our unique IP (Internet Protocol) number or IMED number of cell phone we carry like the registration number of a personal vehicle!  The way our civilisation is heading, maybe the sad reality of the hit movie sequel of The Transformers becoming true in our real life!
The Homo Sapiens  were hunter gatherer initially. The agility of the race made us stand out among other races of animal kingdom. The physical or mental  conditioning of a common hunter gatherer community can easily be matched with the best athletes of the modern day world. But then comes the advent of agriculture in the crescent Mesopotamian region and hence domestication of human race. Farming became the major area of interest. Domestication of cattle helped supply the source of protein but it also became permanent source of ailments which hunter gatherers didn't have to face.
The challenging life of hunter gatherers against all odds and natural calamities including prey to wild animals; people chose to become farmers across the globe except few regions in Kalahari, Andamans, Maici river basin of Amazon, Batak region of Western Philippines, Great Victorian deserts of Western Australia.  A perfect example of Hunter Gatherer is a tribe called Kalahari Bushmen from Kalahari, East Africa who still use the Persistent Hunting method for their prey. This method is known as the oldest form of hunting which takes around 2 to 5 hours to hunt mainly using the own body. Just imagine the patience, perseverance and agility under the sub human conditions! The human race is a unique example of resilience, survival and exuberance. Originating from Southern and Eastern part of continent of Africa, the travel and habitation of the migratory specie is a story of awesomeness indeed. There may be arguments about the cradle of civilization. But the unique way it expanded from Africa to east in Mesopotamia, India, China and beyond; North towards Egypt or farther to Europe speaks of the resilience of Homo sapiens. Science suggests that the last Ice Age our Mother Earth went through dates back to approximately 12 or 13 thousand years back alongside the historical evidence proves that we survived that catastrophe. For 30,000 years ice sheets came and went, at one point covering two thirds of Europe. Old cultures died and new ones emerged over thousands of years, and the hunter-gatherer populations ebbed and flowed,” said Marta Mirazon Lahr of Cambridge University, one of the study’s co-authors. "But we now know that no new sets of genes are coming in. These changes in survival and cultural kit are overlaid on the same biological background,” Dr Mirazon Laur said. Many scientists now believe the existence of Garden of Eden (probably Africa) and the great floods as spelled in various myths across the ancient world. The agriculture also brought a permanent change in our living style, our thought process.We have seen all the great civilisation be it Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indus Valley, Chinese expand by the bank of rivers.
What really has differentiated the Homo Sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom? After the birth, all animals acquire the respective skills by the very basic instinctive characteristics. For example, a bird by basic instinct need not to be taught to fly, a tiger cub the ability to hunt, they can run, swim etc by very basic instinct. On the other hand, a human child needs to be taught how to walk, how to swim, how to talk etc?  Then how against all the natural odds, the human race survived and has come to this level? It is cognitive intelligence which has made us survive. The ability to think, recognise, remember, communicate on own will is what is cognitive behaviour and that is what differentiate us from the rest of the species. The intellectual capacity to adapt is what makes us survive. With this unique ability we have discovered and control fire; captured sea, air, mountain, north and south  poles; invented tools; harvest foods; expedition to the new frontier of space and deep sea, find out treatment to various ailments through this cognitive mind. How adaptable we the human race is indeed amazing on its own merits.

(Part-2 of this article will be published on February 9)

The writer, a banker by profession has worked both in local and overseas market with various foreign and local banks in different positions

 

Digitalisation and artificial intelligence

Digitalisation has made a paradigm shift in our thought process, the way we act, the way we live our lives

PART-I The other day I was trying to reset my password in one of the search engines. While going through the process, an interesting step had to be completed which was typing an alpha numeric code to check whether the requester is a person or a robot. A machine testing the identity of that individual is interesting, isnt it? Marvin Minsky, the scientist who pioneered the popularisation of artificial intelligence died at the age of eighty eight due to cerebral haemorrhage. He established artificial intelligence laboratory in MIT which conducted the works on voice recognition, robotics, learning neural machine etc which formalised the digital world. It is indeed shocking to know the pioneer of the learning machine died of cerebral stroke! The level of digitalisation has really taken us to a level where we cant even think to spend to stay a day without having interconnected devices. The smart phones are available almost in every ones hands with this being all important device rather than just another gadget, laptops are now almost a domestic household appliance which is frequently being used like other electronic items including TV, refrigerator etc. There are social networking sites for which we keep ourselves updated about our near and dear ones both in country and overseas through various apps like viber, FaceTime, Whatsapp and other messenger apps. For making a choice among different alternatives like hotel reservations, doctor appointment, buying a concert or flight ticket etc, we go to specific sites available in the net. The online shopping be it for daily necessities or instant food is now defining the new era of shopping by just going to Amazon, FlickR, EBay etc. Now a days, if we want to know specific details of a subject, we actually dont need to go to libraries and go through volumes of books and encyclopaedia by spending numerous hours, we rather Google it from our smart phones and bingo we get all the details readily available instantaneously. Bitcoin probably will help shape the future of banking industry and companies like Apple, Google etc may become a popular mode for transaction in the coming days posing challenges to conventional brick and mortar banks. Its true that digitalisation has made a paradigm shift in our thought process, the way we act, the way we live our lives et al. Indeed we have become an integral part of the global village. What is trending in New York, Paris, London, Dubai or any part of the world now has become a household agenda for us. There is a gradual shift in the social membrane. Its a long way from the early 90s when in the office by the word automation we meant having couple of 286, 386 or pentium personal computers which were primarily replacement of electronic typewriters. From there on gradual shift to Local Area Network (LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN) to satellite communication through various modes including submarine cable. We had gone through scary moments just before the turn of the century about what may happen in the event of turn over of century itself in our computers! Billions of dollars were spend on presumed fallout of potential system crashes due to a glitch called Y2K. I still remember our activities in control/command center from the afternoon of 31st December till morning of 1st January in the year 2000 watching Midnight bells in unmanned Pacific Islands till midnight struck in Dhaka. That was a Ramadan, so clearly remember that evening. We had to bring in two satellite phones with special permission from Regulators in case the presumed fear turns to reality! The rapid growth in communication technology has brought the world in our finger tips with the smart phone or tablets. The school going kids now can do more than the entire command centers activities during the Y2K. Certainly the information technology has improved the productivity/ efficiency whereby bringing in convenience and comforts to our lives. However, it is happening at a very dear cost where we are losing out softer sides of human values. We exchange mails with the colleague sitting just next to cubicle but hardly whom we get to meet, let alone know about the personal details of that individual. Truly speaking, where have all our human values gone? This value system is what has differentiated the Homo sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom. Gradual deviation from basic human values may soon converge us to the level of a machine. We are now identified by our unique IP (Internet Protocol) number or IMED number of cell phone we carry like the registration number of a personal vehicle! The way our civilisation is heading, maybe the sad reality of the hit movie sequel of The Transformers becoming true in our real life! The Homo Sapiens were hunter gatherer initially. The agility of the race made us stand out among other races of animal kingdom. The physical or mental conditioning of a common hunter gatherer community can easily be matched with the best athletes of the modern day world. But then comes the advent of agriculture in the crescent Mesopotamian region and hence domestication of human race. Farming became the major area of interest. Domestication of cattle helped supply the source of protein but it also became permanent source of ailments which hunter gatherers didnt have to face. The challenging life of hunter gatherers against all odds and natural calamities including prey to wild animals; people chose to become farmers across the globe except few regions in Kalahari, Andamans, Maici river basin of Amazon, Batak region of Western Philippines, Great Victorian deserts of Western Australia. A perfect example of Hunter Gatherer is a tribe called Kalahari Bushmen from Kalahari, East Africa who still use the Persistent Hunting method for their prey. This method is known as the oldest form of hunting which takes around 2 to 5 hours to hunt mainly using the own body. Just imagine the patience, perseverance and agility under the sub human conditions! The human race is a unique example of resilience, survival and exuberance. Originating from Southern and Eastern part of continent of Africa, the travel and habitation of the migratory specie is a story of awesomeness indeed. There may be arguments about the cradle of civilization. But the unique way it expanded from Africa to east in Mesopotamia, India, China and beyond; North towards Egypt or farther to Europe speaks of the resilience of Homo sapiens. Science suggests that the last Ice Age our Mother Earth went through dates back to approximately 12 or 13 thousand years back alongside the historical evidence proves that we survived that catastrophe. For 30,000 years ice sheets came and went, at one point covering two thirds of Europe. Old cultures died and new ones emerged over thousands of years, and the hunter-gatherer populations ebbed and flowed, said Marta Mirazon Lahr of Cambridge University, one of the studys co-authors. But we now know that no new sets of genes are coming in. These changes in survival and cultural kit are overlaid on the same biological background, Dr Mirazon Laur said. Many scientists now believe the existence of Garden of Eden (probably Africa) and the great floods as spelled in various myths across the ancient world. The agriculture also brought a permanent change in our living style, our thought process.We have seen all the great civilisation be it Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indus Valley, Chinese expand by the bank of rivers. What really has differentiated the Homo Sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom? After the birth, all animals acquire the respective skills by the very basic instinctive characteristics. For example, a bird by basic instinct need not to be taught to fly, a tiger cub the ability to hunt, they can run, swim etc by very basic instinct. On the other hand, a human child needs to be taught how to walk, how to swim, how to talk etc? Then how against all the natural odds, the human race survived and has come to this level? It is cognitive intelligence which has made us survive. The ability to think, recognise, remember, communicate on own will is what is cognitive behaviour and that is what differentiate us from the rest of the species. The intellectual capacity to adapt is what makes us survive. With this unique ability we have discovered and control fire; captured sea, air, mountain, north and south poles; invented tools; harvest foods; expedition to the new frontier of space and deep sea, find out treatment to various ailments through this cognitive mind. How adaptable we the human race is indeed amazing on its own merits. (Part-2 of this article will be published on February 9) The writer, a banker by profession has worked both in local and overseas market with various foreign and local banks in different positions