Asimo and Bethovo

Is Artificial Intelligence the Next Revolution?

Aristotle’s system of logic is the first known attempt to prescribe a logical process in a formalized and consistent method. In philosophy it opened a great new path that led to epistemology, the systematic theory of knowledge. In science it became the foundation of the scientific method.

Twenty centuries after Aristotle, Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift wrote his satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels and described a machine that might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study. Swift’s unique mix of science fiction with a satirical critique of contemporary philosophy turned out to be more vision than fiction. Three centuries later, Swift’s Engine is owned and used by more than one billion people around the world and society is structured around the computer in ways that were not foreseen in his time.

There are more fictional accounts of computers mimicking human intelligence. In Arthur Clarke’s and Stanley Cubrick’s film 2001 A Space Odyssey, an intelligent spaceship computer named HAL maintains ship functions and interacts intelligently with the crew, eventually attempting to take control of the spaceship. Interestingly, HAL’s attempt to take control is not due to any consciousness but…