Human Intelligence & Artificial intelligence : Evolution of Data Science - a future of cyborgs?

Human Intelligence refers to humans’ intellectual capability that allows us to think, learn from different experiences, understand complex concepts, apply logic and reason, solve mathematical problems, recognize patterns, make inferences and decisions, retain information, and communicate with fellow human beings.

The human brain has advanced over time in responding to survival instincts, harnessing intellectual curiosity, and managing demands of nature. When humans got an inkling about the dynamics of the environment, we began our quest to replicate nature. Our success in imitating nature has been related to advances in science and technology.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Less than a decade after helping the Allied forces win World War II by breaking the Nazi encryption machine Enigma, mathematician Alan Turing changed history a second time with a simple question: “Can machines think?”

Turing’s 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” and its subsequent Turing Test established the fundamental goal and vision of AI.

To put it simply, Artificial Intelligence (AI), is an approach which helps machines learn on their own with human-like intelligence through a combination of Deep Learning, Machine Learning and Data Science algorithms. Technologies like Neural Networks, Natural Language Processing, Robotics Processing, Cognitive Services, Mixed Reality (AR/VR) etc. make machines more intelligent. As a result, machine systems make decisions the same way we do in our daily lives.

MELDING MIND WITH MACHINE

AI is extremely useful and able to answer complex problems that humans are not equipped to solve. AI is faster at suitable tasks. In some circumstances AI can determine superior outcomes than human-based decision matrices. This is based on its ability to identify complex patterns in large amounts of data. However, the ability of AI to independently perform complex divergent thinking is extremely limited.

Just as ancient Greeks fantasized about soaring flight, today’s imaginations dream of melding minds and machines as a remedy to the pesky problem of human mortality. Can the mind connect directly with artificial intelligence, robots and other minds through brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies to transcend our human limitations?

A BCI can vary along multiple dimensions: whether it interfaces with the peripheral nervous system (a nerve) or the central nervous system (the brain), whether it is invasive or noninvasive and whether it helps restore lost function or enhances capabilities.

Computational neuroscience bridges the gap between human intelligence and AI by creating theoretical models of the human brain for inter-disciplinary studies on its functions, including vision, motion, sensory control, and learning.

Research in human cognition is revealing a deeper understanding of our nervous system and its complex processing capabilities. Models that offer rich insights into memory, information processing, and speech / object recognition are simultaneously reshaping AI.

Over the last 50 years, researchers at university labs and companies around the world have made impressive progress toward achieving such a vision. Recently, successful entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk (Neuralink) and Bryan Johnson (Kernel) have announced new startups that seek to enhance human capabilities through brain-computer interfacing.

In a closer future, as brain-computer interfaces move beyond restoring function in disabled people to augmenting able-bodied individuals beyond their human capacity.

We have seen recent successes in targeted treatment of diseases like diabetes using “electroceuticals” – experimental small implants that treat a disease without drugs by communicating commands directly to internal organs.

And researchers have discovered new ways of overcoming the electrical-to-biochemical language barrier. Injectable “neural lace,” for example, may prove to be a promising way to gradually allow neurons to grow alongside implanted electrodes rather than rejecting them. Flexible nanowire-based probes, flexible neuron scaffolds and glassy carbon interfaces may also allow biological and technological computers to happily coexist in our bodies in the future.

Connecting our brains directly to technology may ultimately be a natural progression of how humans have augmented themselves with technology over the ages, from using wheels to overcome our bipedal limitations to making notations on clay tablets and paper to augment our memories. Much like the computers, smartphones and virtual reality headsets of today, augmentative BCIs, when they finally arrive on the consumer market, will be exhilarating, frustrating, risky and, at the same time, full of promise.