May 11, 1997 was the dawn of a new era for artificial intelligence and perhaps the beginning of the end of human superiority. This was the day International Business Machines Corporation’s (IBM) supercomputer Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov, the reigning chess champion. Chess is regarded as an intellectual game and having a computer beat the greatest chess champion of our time proved that brute computing force can beat the best human brains.
Our lives have silently undergone one of the most radical changes over just one generation. Almost every aspect of our daily life has been blessed by artificial intelligence. The days of Donkey Kong Jr, that famous gorilla of the ‘80s, are long gone. I’ve heard from retired video game veterans that their fingers would punch jumps and hoops faster than what Mr. Kong could handle. Well, he now rests peacefully in the virtual museum of video games of past glory.
Today we do not take time off from our regular world to experience the virtual world. By allowing us to multitask very efficiently, our toys have successfully embedded themselves in our daily lives. Quick-witted intelligence is omnipresent. Smart phones, smart homes, smart cars, smart household appliances and smart games… the list goes on and on. Today if we miss a turn, our cars recalculate the route before our parents finish shouting at us for distracting them.
Being “smart” guarantees the ability of the gadget to perform a function that was previously a human privilege-a privilege we have granted machines that promise to improve the quality of our lives. A noble intention; a dangerous mandate.
“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” warns the eminent British scientist Professor Stephen Hawking. Indeed, machines that perform repetitive human tasks without errors have already eroded jobs for millions of people. It won’t be long until machines will overcome the biological limitations of humans and attain levels of creativity and ability far superior. They will perform the tasks that humans perform but only better.
We have been forewarned of an era that will be the biggest threat to mankind. Accomplished entrepreneur, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil terms it “The Singularity.” According to an interview published in Forbes, Ray Kurzweil claims that machines will match human intelligence as early as 2029. He believes that will be the moment of the Turing Test — the moment at which a computer will exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to or indistinguishable from that of a human. Today his claim seems quite believable. Believe it or not, he said those words when the fax machine had not been invented. He believes the convergence of man and machine in the near future will be made possible only through the powerful medium of language.
“I feel that computer hardware continues to limit the advancements discussed in ‘The Singularity,’” Computer Science and Robotics Teacher Susan Frederick said. “Nanotechnology is moving us closer to the reality of ‘The Singularity’ and I feel we will be involved with some form of ‘Singularity’ that will aid in enhancement of life as we know it. A basic knowledge of computers is essential to stay competitive in today’s world. From on-line courses to doing your own research to ensure integrity, it is a necessary skill for success.”
Indeed, we have already relinquished our skills to navigate, memorize and calculate to Siri. Voice recognition and language processing capabilities have made Siri more trustworthy than our best friend’s hand written route map to his house. And this is just the beginning. Computers do not fully understand the meaning of the content of a language. Well, not yet. But they are getting there. In 2011, IBM’s Watson competed with humans on the quiz show Jeopardy and won. Work is being done to encode the computers to enable them to understand the meaning of the words they read. Once computers begin to read their own instructions, world domination won’t take long!
But, all is not as gloomy as it sounds. We won’t have a HAL 9000 scenario where smart robots rebel against us and slaughter humanity. The founder of Vulcan and co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, states that gaining a comprehensive scientific understanding of human cognition is one of the hardest problems there is. Therefore, it will take quite a while for humanity to create a software that will trigger “The Singularity” effect. However, it is quite encouraging to see major universities offer research programs in cognitive architecture, social simulation and more that map different aspects of human behavior and help us understand biological intelligence. In his book Beyond AI, J.Storrs Hall believes that as technologies advance, our brains will strengthen with the intellectual exchange with our creations and share their intelligence.
Experts predict major breakthroughs in stem cells, genetic engineering, robotics and nano technologies over the next couple of decades that will stave off deadly diseases and bridge us with this high tech wonder world of tomorrow.