The first seminar titled “Artificial Intelligence: Mankind’s Last Invention That Changed the World” was held last Saturday, September 14th at Dr. Indro Soewandi Auditorium, Faculty of Computer Science, Universitas Indonesia. The seminar was started with the introduction of the moderator, Faculty of Computer Science own alumnus, M. Reza Qorib. Then, we were introduced to the speaker, Irvan Bastian Arief, Head of Research Scientist of Tokopedia.
Irvan Bastian Arief opened the seminar with the question “What even is AI?”, the question which everyone would probably know, but can’t seem to answer. After the brief explanation, he then told the audience about the history of AI, which was rooted 50 years ago with Alan Turing as one of the “fathers” of AI. Back to this current era, AI seems to be dominating with various tech-companies already implementing it on their application and website. Take Google or YouTube for example, although we haven’t realized it, the search engine of Google already implemented AI since 2015 for us to make searching even better, same can be said with YouTube’s own recommendation algorithm.
Next, he then told us about his experience in Tokopedia, in which he already did various research to help develop Tokopedia to what it is today. He even said that Tokopedia already developed their own AI, becoming one of the first in the country to do so.
Irvan Arief proceeds to explain about the number one thing we need to know about making an AI, which is Seamless Integration. What this means is that to make an AI is to help people without they even noticing that they are working with an AI. Like the example I mentioned above, Google’s search engine integrates with AI without a lot of people noticing it, which make the Seamless Integration of AI really work.
Then, he taught us about various AI in various sectors such as finance and health and how they really helped those who work in those sectors, rather than replace them like most people say. “Take the advancement of technology,” he said. Although there were jobs who got replaced like fax professional writer with our current PC or Laptop, it also made another whole load of other jobs that is related to PC or Laptop, “No need to be afraid” he said.
In the interview, he told us that “The purpose of AI is to help people make their work easier so we can achieve things that are probably hard for just a human to do, that’s one of the reasons why. Rather than discouraging the development of AI in fear of that they will replace lots of workers like some people in our country today, we need to encourage it to make our life better”
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