Cricket decisions to self-driving car deaths: Spot the AI paradox

Human biases lead to frequent failures but we expect technology systems to be entirely error-free

- DEVINA MEHRA

A recent Primer on artificial intelligence (AI) in this newspaper mentioned all the ways AI could go wrong. Some of the issues related to AI taking over, like robots coming up with a language of their own. But there were also examples like self-driving cars causing accidents or AI giving wrong medical diagnoses.

Even in cricket, while rule-enforcing systems have been in place for a while, there are still occasional murmurs from players, commentators and spectators about the number of errors these make. People still talk about the wrong dismissal in 2014 of Pakistani opener Shan Masood in a Test match against New Zealand on account of a review call taken by the Decision Review System.

It is rather obvious that human beings will be reluctant to outsource decision-making to systems like this which make errors. This appears to be the right way to do things. But is it?

Let us do a thought experiment. India has more than 150,000 people dying each year in road accidents—among the highest in the world even on a percentage-of-population basis. Now suppose all vehicles are changed to self-driving ones and the death toll drops to 50,000. What will newspaper headlines be?

Think carefully before you read any further. Will the headlines be, "Self driving vehicles reduce death toll by two thirds"? Or will they be, "Self driving vehicles kill 50,000 Indians every year." My guess is, it will be the latter. This is the paradox!