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ฉบับพิเศษ ประจำ�ปี 2564

René Descartes. The plain reading of it somewhat validates the argument that our ability
to think defines our existence as a natural person. Some machines can think but they
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are only as ‘accessories’ to human to make our lives better through innovations. However,
technology is not entirely harmless because automation can be disruptive to the future

of work, as already seen in the legal industry. With predictive justice will the day come
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when we have ‘predictive medicine and healthcare’ where one’s DNA profile, medical
records and lifestyles are recorded then analysed by AI to generate the probability of

chronic diseases and lifespan? At least the field of medicine is far more scientific than
the law whereas AI can contribute a lot more to human civilisation than trying to predict

the outcome of winning a lawsuit involving, say, ‘a snail in a beer bottle.’ Predictive
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medicine can be prophylactic thus reduce the cost of healthcare and increase the lifespan
of the population.

However, even before AI takes over our lives, we have already developed
a reliance on technology, sometimes question how smart might we be; today, our phones

and watches need to be charged. If we fail to do so, we will have no mode of
communication, cannot tell time and possibly also unable to make payment using
our smartphone. No wonder the saying, ‘smart devices, stupid human’. In our strife

for convenience, speed and perfection, we are surrendering ourselves to machines.
Maybe one day we will stop thinking and make machines think for us. Time will tell if

one day AI will write articles for us like this; it can be grammatically near perfect,
though. As food for thought, the song Artificial Man by the British rock band
‘The Kinks’ in 1974 quite poetically sums up this article:

48 See Deepak Chopra, ‘Artificial Intelligence will never rival the deep complexity of the human mind’
The Huffington Post (New York, 6 December 2017) <https://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/artificial-
intelligence-human_b_10240122.html> accessed 1 April 2021
49 Susskind (n 35) 1-3
50 Referring to Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] UKHL 100

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