Persuasive Essay Sample: AI vs Human Intelligence

AI is rarely as valuable as human intelligence in the production of knowledge. My definition of valuable is being able to do something consistently. When it comes to real life problems that include cause and effect, AI is not very reliable. AI tends to look at a group of data and generalise it to find the answer which rarely works.

For example, when it comes to face recognition technology which, in theory, helps us catch criminals by scanning thousands or millions of people’s faces and comparing them to previous criminals. Though it is useful in paper, it becomes a disaster in practice. The University of Essex found out that only 20% of the people the AI caught as ‘criminals’ were correct.  In comparison, the average accuracy rate of a criminal profiler is about 66%.  This is evidence that AI cannot produce knowledge as consistently and accurately as a human can when it comes to recognizing faces and therefore is less valuable. In 2017 Mariya Yao published an article on which AI is the best at being able to tell a chihuahua and a muffin apart. She found out that Microsoft has a hard time telling apart between a muffin and a chihuahua.  This also shows that AI is bad at being able to tell apart a muffin and a dog. But us humans, we can tell them apart easily and consistently. This also supports that human intelligence is more valuable than AI in producing knowledge. 

IBM made an AI that was supposed to recommend treatments for cancer patients. IBM spent more than 5 billion dollars on this AI. This AI failed, it recommended flawed suggestions that could cause people’s lives. Essentially, people in this sector say that AI currently cannot look at hundreds of millions of data and compare it to each other while also comparing it to the symptoms of the patient inorder to find the most cost-effective treatment for the patient as efficiently and as consistently as human doctors and physicians can. This shows that doctors, humans, are better at producing knowledge on treatments of illnesses than AI that cost several billions. 

Though this does not mean that AI is completely worthless in the production of knowledge. For example, with the use of an AI we were able to finish what Beethoven started while writing his 10th symphony. Though it might not be perfect, with the use of AI and little to almost no clue of what the symphony was like we were able to finish it. This shows how useful and valuable an AI is when it comes to producing knowledge about the arts. This AI was able to listen and analyse many compositions of the era Beethoven lived in and also listen to his compositions while also analysing the fragments of notes Beethoven left behind. By doing this the AI was able to finish the composition with great consistency throughout the composition. What the AI did was as valuable as what a human would be able to do if given enough time. This shows that sometimes, especially in the arts, AI is as valuable as human intelligence in the production of knowledge. 

So overall, I would say that AI is rarely as valuable as human intelligence in the production of knowledge. The reasoning behind this is the past results I’ve given of AI producing knowledge in multiple areas of knowledge such as natural science and the arts.