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Home Articles Reviews Videos App Store Book Shop Forum Aritifical Intelligence - The Future and Now By Adam Sinicki Artificial intelligence is a highly fascinating subject that revolves around the quest for humans through engineering and/or programming, to create an intelligence that is indistinguishable from conscious life. It is defined technically as 'the study and design of intelligent agents', with the agent being a system that can perceive its environment or some form of input and respond accordingly. The concept here is that the aspects that make up human intelligence is so well understood that it can be directly duplicated by a programme or machine. However this is neglecting the fact that human brain is far from completely understood and that we are discovering new things about it all the time - such as its 'plasticity', I.e. it's ability to change shape in response to our behaviour. Thus there have so far been no successful examples of artificial intelligence proper, though there are crude forms that 'mimic' human behaviour in response to the correct input and stimuli, such as the AI used in computer games to control computer players. Basic artificial intelligence then is used to mimic human behaviour and in computers to automate various numerical tasks, though these all are based on an 'input/output' basis. True artificial intelligence would be able to engage in conversation, come up with entirely new concepts, learn, write essays and novels and make scientific breakthroughs. Through being part of a machine, artificial intelligence would also have the added ability of being able to 'programme' itself and thus expand its own abilities. At the same time it would not be limited by time, or by processing power (it would most likely use the 'cloud' - millions of connected computers across a network such as the internet). If a computer or a programme could do this, and could envision new ways to improve its own cognitive ability, it could rapidly overtake human thinking and could lead to numerous breakthroughs as its intelligence grew exponentially. It could this way lead to an explosion in the quality of our technology far faster and more impressive than any we have thus far been used to. At the same time it could duplicate itself endlessly and perform infinite tasks simultaneously. It would be able to perform many - in fact most - human jobs for us, and would perhaps make us almost obsolete. Of course there is the fear - echoed in many science fiction stories - that such artificial intelligence would not be friendly. Though if it were to remain in our control, it could very well bring about a golden age or a modern utopia, which is often referred to as the 'technological singularity'. The earliest concepts of 'thinking machines' existed in Greek myths such as Talos of Crete, the golden robots of Hephaestus and others. This was quite a forward thinking concept seeing that it was long before the existence of computers when machines had nothing resembling human intelligence. Many ancient cultures mistakenly believed that objects that bore likeness to the human form would be imbue with intelligence and thus animated statues and automated humanoid figures were constructed in ancient Egypt and Greece. In the 19th century stories such as Frankenstein and others features artificial beings popularly. This continued until the 20th century where the development of computers gave more understanding to how artificial intelligence might work. It was mathematician Alan Turing who used the laws of 'formal' reasoning (logic) to deduce that a computer could use just two symbols (which would be '0' and '1') in order to simulate any other mathematical deduction. This lead to the development of binary and computers, and along with breakthroughs in neurology and cybernetics, this lead to the serious consideration that a computer could simulate human thought precisely. This was further encouraged by cognitive theories of psychology that were explaining the human mind as working very much as a computer would. This lead to many successes and much funding for research into AI. And that lead to the development of 'Expert Systems' used to mimic the knowledge of one or several experts in a field, and to AI systems controlling everything from mining procedures, to car assembly to difficult surgical operations. However all of these still only mimic intelligence rather than providing true consciousness for machines. There are many reasons that this has so far failed, and many problems facing AI research. The first is that much of our learning and intelligence comes from our ability to interact with the world around us. We developed intelligence because we witnessed the actions and reactions in the real world and learned how to bring about desired effects. A programme in a computer however has no 'sandbox' to play in and no way to experiment with cause and effect. Of course one way to get around this problem is to put a machine in a robotic body, but unfortunately limitations in cybernetics cause machines to have far less of a wealth of experience as they cannot manipulate and interact with the environment in the same way without falling over or getting stuck, and don't have the same wealth of sensory information. At the same time, even if they could, they would have to exist and interact the world for a large duration of time in order to have the wealth of experience necessary to be 'intelligent'. Already this limits the vast abilities that AI could potentially feature listed above. It would seem then that a computer intelligence would have to work in a very different way, and to be able to think of itself as a machine, and as a programme, and to get its input from our hard drives and the internet. Alternatively they could just exist in their 'own mind' and experiment with mathematical equations with no need for understanding the outside world. But would an intelligence that worked so differently be vastly useful to us? It is also difficult to know how much of the information that an artificial intelligence device should come pre-installed with. It seems that humans have some basic foundations for learning built in from birth - such as the ability to recognise faces, and the ability to develop language (Chomsky's theory of a language acquisition device in our brains). It is hard to know what abilities to program into a computer from the start, and what to give it as a point of reference. If you include too much information in the actual programming rather than letting it learn it, then it will only be able to learn specific kinds of things rather than being able to adapt to the situation as true intelligence does. Without preset concepts though it can have no point of reference and will not be able to conceptualise anything else. How humans grasp these concepts is not understood. Another problem is that consciousness requires self awareness, and to be aware of itself not only physically, but also psychologically and to be aware of its own thoughts and to analyse and change these. However human mind can also step back and be aware of its own awareness, in an endless cycle, which seems like an impossible paradox to programme into a computer. One of the very largest problems with creating consciousness however is the simple fact that we don't really yet know what consciousness is and this is a fierce debate among philosophers. How can you recreate something if you don't know what it is? Thus true machine intelligence and consciousness is a long way from being realised. However when we do see it it is likely to come in a form very different from what we imagine it - it likely won't be a programme you type to talk to, and it won't be a robot. It may very well though also change the world within days of its creation if it can truly learn and programme itself, and is likely to exist using some of the things we are building now such as the internet in order to be able to access the necessary processing power by existing on multiple machines, and to be able to have access to the vast reservoir of knowledge and information that has been created this way. By looking at the current progress of computers and the speed at which their processing power has thus far been progressing it is predicted that the desktop computer will have the same raw processing power as the human brain by 2029. The storage capacity of the human brain has already been estimated at being around 10 terabytes, which is not completely unachievable at all. Before artificial intelligence is born at all though, it is likely that the concepts will be used to augment human intelligence in a form of 'exo cortex'. It is interesting to note that our interaction with technology has actually shaped our evolution and vice versa, and this could well be the next step in human evolution and the beginning of Tran humanism. You may also be interested in: Buy Now: Project Superman Paper-back! Yes you read right: Project Superman is now available as a 124-page paper back! For just £13.88 (+P&P) Project Superman is the name I gave to my personal mission to try and improve myself in every way possible; to become faster, stronger, smarter and more agile. 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