Artificial intelligence: boon or curse?

[Arthur_Vandelay]

From Barbarella and 2001: a Space Odyssey to I, Robot and The Matrix (and all stops in between), artificial intelligence has played a prominent role in late twentieth- and early twenty-first century popular culture. But what is artificial intelligence? According to John McCarthy from the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, artificial intelligence "is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs" (source (http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai/whatisai.html)). It "endeavors to emulate aspects of human intelligence, e.g. reasoning, perception, planning, problem—solving, and language understanding" (source (http://web.syr.edu/~satucker/ai.html)). Most of us would be familiar with the cyborgs, robots, androids, replicants and Terminators of science fiction, but as this BBC site (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/ai/) points out, we "don't often don't notice it, but artificial intelligence (AI) is all around us. It is present in computer games, in the cruise control in our cars and the servers that route our email."

If AI has a "founding father" he would be Alan Turing, mathematician and WWII cryptographer. In 1950 he devised the well-known "Turing Test" to establish whether a machine displayed intelligence: "In the Turing Test, two people (A and B) sit in a closed room, while an interrogator (C) sits outside. Person A tries to fool the interrogator about their gender, while person B tries to assist the interrogator in their identification. Turing suggested a machine take the place of person A. If the machine consistently fooled the human interrogator, it was likely to be intelligent" (source (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/ai/). Turing's involvement in military intelligence during the Second World War is significant, as there has been much interest in (not to speak of a great deal of research funding for) the potential (and actual) military applications of AI: problem solving and logistics, "smart" weaponry, and so forth. The US Army offers a course (http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usacsl/divisions/std/branches/keg/maai.htm) in the military applications of artificial intelligence (see also this site (http://www.nrl.navy.mil/aic/index.php)).

Obviously, AI raises interesting questions about what it means to be human, about the boundaries between humans and technology and between the organic and the inorganic. It has even spawned the emergent discipline of "Artificial Life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Life)."

But AI also raises ominous questions about our future. In an interview on ABC's Lateline (http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2004/s1158232.htm) regarding artificial intelligence in the context of the recent release of the film I, Robot, Reading University Professor of Cybernetics Kevin Warwick warns that "we must face the fact that robots could be far more intelligent than humans. Maybe it's positive, but I think if they're more intelligent it could be very dangerous." Yet Warwick reassures us that not all is lost. "One realistic alternative to the hand of evolution patting humans on the back in an "it's been nice knowing you" way, is for humans to themselves link up much more closely with the circuitry being created. We can enhance our abilities by linking the workings of the human body directly with technology. We humans can evolve into cyborgs - part human, part machine" (source (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3954989,00.html)).

What are your thoughts on AI and its potential applications?

Does this emergent technology pose a threat to humanity, or will it prove beneficial?

And do you think that "becoming-cyborg" is a viable way of addressing the notion that one day intelligent machines might be more intelligent than us?

[Nóm]

Well they still don't have the motor skills and number of scenes we do. I don't think some kind of microchip or other parts that can beat the biggst human chess expert is any threat to us. Unless maybe the machines become able to transmit to our minds or the minds of animals and can enslave or attack us in that way.

If humans last long enough they will become cyborgs. Something like a cyborg could potentially become immortal and that is man's ultimate goal I think. I think cyborgs are our destiny as a race.

Maybe as humans it is just too easy to imagine intellgent robots rebelling against us and seeking to be masters of this world and beyond, only because that is the nature of living things as we know them. The idea is something that i think would occur to coutless people independantly of eachother if it were not already known from science fiction. Preservation of our own race. No beings on earth know this better than humans. The idea would probably come in proportion with how human-like in form the robot is. But robots aren't a lifeform if you ask most people, so for all most of us know they just can't be wired to try to take over. Maybe they do not have and will not ever have this instinct for preservation that we animals have? I'm sure robots perform maintenence on themselves but I don't expect they do it because it is an insticnt. So, while a robot might continue to take care of itself as it has been programmed to do, there may be no reason it would go beyond this and try to rule the whole world with its kind.

Becoming cyborg could address the problem I think, but on the other hand a machine with human parts (depend upon which human parts) may have that great survival instinct and cyborgs might be more able and willing to take over the world than pure humans are, because they migh thave more intelligence coupled with just as much instinct. I can even imagine super-intellgent cyborgs whose main goal is bodily pleasure of the human parts. I find this idea frightening and plausable same day.


I think the robots will be benefitial, at least in the way things like the industrial revolution were benefitional. But I don't doubt there will be consequences of a mangatude we can't even imagine today except in paranoid fear.

I wouldn't be surprised to see cyborgs common later in the century. I image the consequences might be disasterous but that we will probably overcome it.
A world dominated, even enslaved at first by cyborgs of some kind (imagine a war of cyborg versus cyrbog) , may well be the form in which we survive the cyborg revolution. We come out as cyborgs in the end, but maybe against the will of many.

[greypilgrim]

I want to be a cyborg!

[Mrs. Maggott]

We have to determine what is meant by "intelligence". Do we mean the ability to make "calculations" or do we mean "sentience" - that is, the presence of "free will" and the ability to make moral judgments and experience emotions. A machine can do the former, it cannot (at least not at the present time) do the latter. However, when a "machine" (and after all, to a very great extent, we are "organic machines") has free will and can make moral judgments and actually have emotions and not just the appearance of emotions, then they will no longer be machines in the sense in which we presently use that word. They will in fact be life forms.

Will mankind ever be able to produce a machine capable of moving on the plane of existence from a mere robot to something very much like himself? (In other words, will we ever be "godlike" enough to create a sentient being?) I don't know, but I certainly hope not! As a species, we aren't too trustworthy with other life forms which share the planet (I am thinking of horrible stories of the abuse of animals). Indeed, we frequently aren't even good to each other! I don't think we need to add yet another life form that can be abused by those who don't deserve to be called "human"!

[greypilgrim]

I don't think they'll ever make a robot that good.

[Gildor]

The actual value of natural intelligence has yet to be proven, let alone that of the artificial.

But it will happen. We are too much in love with ourselves to resist creating mechanical children that can look, act, think, and potentially even feel the same way we do.

What is instinct except subtle programming? What is emotion except an electrochemical response triggered by stimulation? We lack the tools and knowledge to create these things now, but not for long.

Cyborgs already exist, but not in the popular sense envisioned by Sci-Fi and cyberpunk stories. Already a great number of human beings are reliant on technology to the point of exclusion of their own arms and legs. We are not yet physically merged with it, but our devices will get smaller and smaller to the point of being invisible except for some kind of interface which may well exist only in our minds.

Technology is already far outpacing human enlightenment. Unless we can evolve with it, there will very likely come a point where we are so far behind that it will abandon us entirely.

[Arthur_Vandelay]

Cyborgs already exist, but not in the popular sense envisioned by Sci-Fi and cyberpunk stories.

Actually, many cyberpunk stories do make the case that cyborgs "already exist"--see William Gibson's work, and the Bruce Sterling-edited anthology Mirrorshades.

[Arthur_Vandelay]

On the subject of artificial intelligence, there's a magnificent flash presentation on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Take a look:

Kubrick 2001: the space odyssey explained (http://www.kubrick2001.com/)