Artificial Intelligence
Is artificial intelligence less than our intelligence?
- Spike Jonz
Imagine walking into a grocery store with your cart. It scans your face as you enter into the building, recognizes you, and brings up the shopping list you made the night before. It greets you in the voice of your favorite actor, a loved one, or even yourself. As you begin to put the items down, the cart scans each of your items - the milk goes in, the bread, the chocolate bar - ding! ding! ding! Before you reach the checkout counter, the cart makes you stop - you missed one item on your shopping list! You return to the aisles of food and drinks to retrieve your forgotten item and pass the bakery. Your cart speaks to you - reminding you of your mother's favorite cookies - Snickerdoodle. You decide to get a batch for dinner that night with your parents. As you walk down the familiar path to the checkout counters, you sigh a breath of relief as you wonder what would have happened had you forgotten an item, or come up to dinner empty-handed. You return the cart back to the front of the store, and walk out the automated doors, into your car.
This scenario is a perfect example of AI - The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) creates an environment of fear intermixed with awe in the slippery slope of advancement that many have traveled down. Whether an individual is a mathematical genius, physicist, entrepreneur, or inquisitor, if AI will make our world lean towards Utopian or Dystopian tendencies is a question that will most likely inevitably pop up when the topic of AI pops up. Ray Kurzweil, a famed geneticist and researcher, believes that AI will lead to a more Utopian world where machines would be a means for people to enhance their bodies and minds, allowing us to become both smarter and stronger. On the other hand, Elon Musk, an entrepreneur, believes that AI represents a very serious threat to humanity. For example, if we were to give the global issue of climate change to an AI program, the best possible way to solve the problem, as deduced by the AI thought process, would be the extermination of the human race. However, that would seem like a Dystopian for us - where even more harm and damage is committed.
Timeline
1950s: researchers, like Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy, had the goal of imbuing computers with human intelligence.
1980s: 2 types of groups began working on AI - (1) Rule-Based AI, believing that the best results would derive from making programs one rule at a time (such as squares have sides of equal length) and (2) Neural-Network AI, believing that machinery can learn from experience (such as letting an AI program make a wrong assumption that squares have unequal side lengths, then being corrected, and storing the correct information for a later time in the future).
Early-2000s: China began copying every successful Silicon Valley project, causing many people in Western culture and society to write off on China's ability to ever be an innovative competitor. However, while being copycat innovators, Chinese entrepreneurs began learning how to make their own world-class products.
Mid-2000s: This was the moment when AI finally received what it needed: a plethora of data to analyze and computing power faster than ever. At this time, AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton was able to advance AI technology and multiply the AI processing power to a whole different level. At this moment, Neural-Network AI had been rebranded to Deep Learning.
2012: A big breakthrough on deep learning was made public with Hinton's new AI algorithm that blew away the competition at visual recognition. At this moment in time, AI was capable of processing complex problems, recognizing patterns, and coming up with amazing results. In the past, AI didn't seem practical in everyday life, but in 2012, it fulfilled daily functions (audio/visual recognition, complex financial decisions, driving a car, etc.).
2016: In China, AlphaGo, an AI program, beat champion Go player Lee Sedol in a 3-game tournament. It was the moment when a computer beat a person intellectually. While Lee's fans were disappointed, the people of China were inspired by this feat, wanting to use AI to their advantage. The Chinese government itself declared their ambition to be the global leader in AI innovation within the next 10 years.