Will Artificial Intelligence outsmart us?
‘Success in creating effective AI(Artificial Intelligence) could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization or the worst. We just don’t know.’
—Stephen Hawking
Introduction
Are we creating the instruments of our own destruction or exciting tools for our future survival? Once we teach a machine to learn on its own, as the programmers behind AlphaGo have done with wondrous results, where do we draw moral and computational lines from?
What is Intelligence?
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change (Stephen Hawking). Intelligence is central to what it means to be human. Everything that civilization has to offer is a product of human intelligence. DNA passes the blueprints of life between generations. Ever more complex life forms input information from sensors such as eyes and ears and the output of the information is given out via muscles.
In my opinion, there is no significant difference in the mechanics of how the brain of an earthworm works and how the computer works. In fact, there could be no qualitative difference between the working of the human brain and the working of an earthworm’s brain because the molecular way in which all of them functions is the same, it's just the complexity of arrangement which makes the difference.
Surpassing the Known Intelligence Levels
It is clearly possible for something to acquire higher intelligence than its ancestors, as we evolved from our ape-like ancestors. If computers continue to obey Moore’s Law they would very soon surpass the human intelligence level. Then we are to face an intelligence explosion.
AI would be able to self-program itself and achieve its goals, without any external support, easily. When that happens, we have to make sure that AI adapts, understands, and retains our goals. We cannot simply dismiss the notion of higher intelligent beings than us. This would be our biggest mistake.
Current progress made by AI
For the last 20 years or so, AI has been focused on working in a particular stimulating environment. It has been able to contribute to statistical and economic notions and hence make decisions or plans.
It has hence yielded great results in fields such as :
- Speech Recognition
- Image classification
- Autonomous vehicles
- Machine translation
- Question/Answering
The last human discovery
The peak of AI would be the last discovery of the human race. Just like how a monkey may spend his entire life hitting and trying to open a padlock but may or may not succeed in doing so, a human might just go and study its framework and will be able to open it up in a relatively very short span of time. Similarly, the super-smart AI being will be able to overcome all the problems such as poverty, disease, etc. which we humans have been facing for a long amount of time.
It would do all the inventions for us and would be able to achieve anything that we humans were not able to in many decades or even centuries.
There is no physical law that stops us from arranging the particles in such a way that can be even more advanced than the human brain. AI can outsmart us in financial markets, human research, leadership, etc.
The Future
When AI reaches such an advanced form, then, our prime concern should be to prevent any mishappenings. A huge amount of money is currently being invested in this aspect. Many institutes all over the world are spending huge chunks of money to achieve this.
When AI advances, we humans also have to develop and change with AI. Society needs to merge with AI. As Elon Musk said that in order to overcome poverty and enhance our minds, we need to adapt ourselves. AI will change us as well. AI won’t be the end of humanity but a beginning of a new society of extra intelligence.
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