Can Machines Think?
Lady Augusta Ada Lovelace, who is also known as the first programmer in computer history, was the first to raise this question: “Can machines think?” This was in connection to the “Notes by the translator” authored by her, on the Analytical Engine developed by Charles Babbage in the early 1840s. Ever since, this surreal clause has been reverberating in the annals of computer history. We identify this in technological parlance as Artificial Intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence, or AI has seen a multitude of ways it has been acknowledged as, from pure Artificial Intelligence to Cybernetics. Pure Artificial Intelligence had its proponents in Alan Turing and John McCarthy, who advocated that machines can be made to think. On the other extreme, visionaries like J.C.R. Licklider were supporters of machines augmenting human capacities, which they called as Cybernetics (Augmented Intelligence). AI has been in popular culture for quite a time now, and has undergone various scientific treatments, dissertations, experiments, thoughts, assertions and rebuttals, and still continue to intrigue.
Wikipedia defines AI as, “the intelligence exhibited by machines and software”. Oxford defines Intelligence as, “the ability to learn, understand and think in a logical way about things”. AI, thus in essence, stands for an entity that can mimic a human brain, in all its faculties.
Though the philosophies are different, we know we deal with the same demon: Human Intelligence, outside the human brain — Is it possible? Where is the seat of thought?
Let’s walk down an alley that we may to hope might illuminate our further endeavors in the discipline.
What is thinking, in layman’s language?
Thinking, when looked at objectively, maybe put down roughly, as the following:
We respond — when we find ourselves in a new circumstance / environment. The human brain is adaptive. We have the ability to come up with innovations. We perceive a situation, and come up with solutions. If we don’t have one by habit (learning from the past), we invent a new solution. We are inventive. We are not limited with boundaries. We have no boxes to think in from.
We create — a piece of music, or a painting. The human brain is creative, artistic. We have a hunch for the divine in our art. Art that appeals, transforms, heals. Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. The Taj Mahal.
We feel — the first rays of the sun, the mother’s love, the child’s tenderness, the poor man’s plight, the joy of achievement.
We know — we don’t just memorize, we know the things we learn. We have the power of cognition, analytic reasoning, and intuitive insight. Our knowledge of things is involuted, complicated.
Though what have been mentioned above are quite commonplace, we are a rarity, we sport Consciousness in us. We sport Intelligence.
Pure Artificial Intelligence — Where do we stand?
Right from Ada’s foreshadowing of the demon in the 1840s, through when McCarthy coined the term Artificial Intelligence in 1955, to when you are reading this, the following things have happened. These have been standing closest to the concept of pure artificial intelligence:
IBM’s Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997 — Garry Kasparov, the reigning champion at the time, who had to take defeat at the hands of a machine, said of the victory of his adversary as a victory won by brute force; the computational capabilities of the time was leveraged to an extent of ‘thinking’ up to 20 moves into a game, in IBM’s Deep Blue. “Deep Blue was intelligent the way your programmable alarm clock is intelligent. ” — Kasparov.
Autonomous vehicles make it to the finish line of the 100 km long off-roader DARPA challenge in 2005 — Cognizance improvements with processing power have paved way for auto-driven vehicles. The autonomous vehicles, as they are called, use high-resolution cameras and LIDAR (light detection and ranging), a way of estimating distances to objects by bouncing light and sound off things. Tracking obstacles on the way are done with the aid of real-time and simulation data. Though we don’t have many on road, we will in a few more years.
Boston Dynamics continues to push the limits of whole-body mobility through its robots — Anthropomorphic. Deft. Light. Grace. These humanoids will be the working hands at our nearest IKEA, in another decade. Forefathers of R. Daneel Olivaws.
Do these milestones take us any further from the question we have formulated as pure AI? Can human intelligence or thinking capability be simulated? Will super-processing emulate the human brain?
We shall discuss on the topic of pure Artificial Intelligence here, within the coming weeks — The vehicles of AI, the fallacy of pure artificial intelligence through these vehicles, and pure AI possibilities through other means.
Next week: The Vehicles of AI — Analog and Digital Computers.
