HI or AI? What is your take?

We do have to teach in schools the basics of everything. But there is no need for the students to memorize a lot of facts, which can now be found in the internet. Whatever information you need, is available at your fingertips. The focus of teaching should be to improve the analytical ability of the students. The need of the hour is analytical brain. If we have to beat the machines, we need to be having the analytical ability which leads to problem-solving capability. Future is not for the 'run-of-the-mill' type of graduates.

There has been a recent research study done by an Australian University, by studying and analyzing the short selection of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, from their earlier Australian Open matches. By doing this, they have formulated an algorithm, which can predict the shot selection of the above players in different match situations. Though it makes sense, I still do not believe that this will work in real playing conditions. They might have improvised their game and strategy in the present, which would not have been taken into account while the algorithm was worked out. Just by knowing where the above players will hit the ball, in a given situation, a less talented and lesser skilled player cannot win over them. Mathematics will not work here. The most talented and highly skilled players that they are, can always think of some other strategy and selection of shots on the court. Depending on the situation, within a fraction of a second, they can change the direction in which they are going to hit the next shot, The same analysis can be applied to other games like Chess, Badminton etc.

Well, we have to harness the modern technology to our advantage. Wherever we need speed of operation (much higher than that is possible by humans), and repetitive actions (boring for humans), we should put the machines in place. And when we cannot handle the miniscule sizes, machines or robots will be of great help. But wherever analytical thinking is required, all said and done, human brain will work wonders, if trained properly. That is my perception and you might differ from my views.

I saw a cartoon in a newspaper recently. A 'father-like' robot tells the 'son-like' robot, "Beware of human intelligence"! There is a fear that machines and 'artificial intelligence' will dominate the future course of events. But I still have my faith in 'human intelligence', which is certainly a cut above the machines. As the capability of the machines is getting better and better, we too should sharpen our brains. After all, human brain is a 'gift' of God, whereas the machines are human invention only.