May 10, 2018

AI Is Impossible To Regulate But It Won’t Be A Threat To Humans — Tanmay Bakshi

Tanmay Bakshi, the extraordinary 14-year old AI scientist, gave his keynote speech on the final day of the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) International Conference on Wednesday in Dubai, discussing a variety of subjects from quantum computing to blockchain and artificial intelligence.

Held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, the four-day IIA event was attended by over 3,000 business professionals from around the world.

As well as discussing several of the apps and programs that he has personally designed, Bakshi addressed several popular auditing topics from quantum computing to neural networks and blockchain.

The majority of his speech however was reserved for his thoughts on artificial intelligence (AI), and whether or not it is a threat to mankind.

“Everyone is scared of AI becoming so intelligent that we can’t understand what it’s doing,” he told the packed auditorium at Dubai World Trade Centre. “But that’s a very far-fetched situation. We as humans aren’t intelligent enough to worry that a non-human artificial intelligence could supersede us.

“AI itself will not become a threat to humans. [But] it’s impossible to make sure that AI will be used for ethical purposes because you can’t control what people will do with the technology. But the entire point is that while people may use it for something fraudulent, AI will in turn be used to stop those people.”

On being pushed again on the dangers of AI, Bakshi explained further. “It’s impossible to regulate the use of AI, it’s just another algorithm that will be used by anyone who was access to a computer. But AI will be used to counter those misuses.”

Addressing a room full of the world’s top auditors, Bakshi also addressed some concerns that AI will one day make skilled professions obsolete.

“Many people think that AI is meant to replace us in our everyday lives, but simply this isn’t true. AI was created by us to allow us to do what we already do but in a better way.

“AI works with firms to allow for much less labour intensive work. It’s meant to empower us, allowing us to work in a much better way than we ever could have done before.

“AI can tell us where we need to focus our attention, where human auditors are required, raising those red flags so we don’t have to. It will be limited to specific cases and narrow domains, but it will do amazing things in those narrow domains. AI is going to help us to be better.”

More than 3,000 delegates from over 100 countries, including business executives, politicians and experts, took part in the annual international IIA conference, at Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre from May 6 to 9.

Bakshi is a software developer, author, keynote speaker, algorithm-ist, honorary IBM Cloud advisor, IBM Champion for Cloud and a YouTuber. He is also only 14 years old.

The teenage coding star has been programming since the age of five and had his first iOS app, tTables, accepted at aged nine.

Speaking ahead of his visit to Dubai for the IIA International Conference, Tanmay talked about his fields of expertise.

“In the field of auditing, and in lots of other fields, humans do some jobs that they really don’t need to be doing and they’re very inefficient at those jobs,” said Tanmay, who lives just outside of Toronto, in Brampton, Canada.

“Lots of companies worldwide are working towards implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to solve exactly those problems.”

Tanmay, who has delivered keynote speeches at major technology events including IBM Interconnect in Las Vegas, IBM DeveloperConnect in Bangalore and the National Leadership Conference in Niagara, predicts AI will soon be at the centre of how businesses operate.

“AI technology brings extra efficiency, accuracy, and speed to the table. It allows us to use the same technology that we’ve been using for decades in fields that they never could have been used in before,” he said.

“We can now implement human-intelligence requiring tasks at scale, meaning that businesses can now make sense of and use the 80 per cent of unstructured data that currently sits around and does nothing.”

An up-to-date IT strategy is critical to good corporate governance, said Tanmay, who likened recent advances in technology to the “4^th industrial revolution”.