I went to attend a Seminar of Artificial Intelligence (AI) last week where a speaker talked about tasks like going to the toilet, cooking and even sleeping will be carried out by machines controlled by a series of software programs.

When my time came to ask questions, I wanted to know how AI will take care of our sleep. To me, his answer defied ‘human intelligence.’ He said there will be a device fitted in your body that would ‘lull’ you to sleep by relaxing your nerves. The same device will be programmed to wake you up at the precise time.

No one has coined the term ‘Human Intelligence’ as HI maybe because we all take for granted the natural gift built into us by God. It is frightening to think that AI is now threatening HI when we can no longer have control of the basic things we normally go through on our daily activities. It is all about automation where business people tell us that technology can make our life easier while they make a lot of money.

It is also frightening that we will no longer think for ourselves once AI has been fully commercialized. People will never be needed to work in the shops, offices and even construction sites. Taxi drivers will go out of business and so are salesmen, clerks, retailers and even office managers. All this will lead to boredom and uselessness when people will feel they have no role to play in their daily lives. The rate of unemployment and crimes will go up and people will feel hopeless where simple tasks have been taken away from them.

With AI now being taught in universities, teachers are not preparing them with the eventuality of law-breaking and the rate of crimes that would increase at intolerable levels. AI will also threaten autonomy and mental well-being of millions of people. The essential elements of being human will be lost forever and never to return.

I also predict an early dementia for most people to start in their fifties when they can no longer make their own decisions. They will not be able to control their emotions or think for themselves. It is not an exaggeration when AI will take over even a simple task like switching off the lights in our daily lives. Humans will be relegated into an empty shell with an empty mind.

You want to go to the beach? AI will bring the beach right to your living room complete with the sound of the waves and the sea breeze cooling your face. Perhaps you want to take a walk on a park? AI can take you through well-trimmed grass and escort you under the shades of the trees and get you seated on a bench overlooking a lake. But neither of them will be real. It will be an extension of what we usually dream in the night to haunt us during our waking hours using AI.

But the main concern is what will be real and what is artificial. There will be a thin line dividing reality and what a computer program is having us to believe. In conclusion, AI will prevent us to exercise our free will and turn our daily lives into a series of robotic actions.