Artificial Intelligence

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/05/01/avengers-age-of-ultron-and-the-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/#.VUcP4b7leFI

Have you already watched “Avengers: Age of Ultron”? If yes, you have probably heard many times the term “artificial intelligence” during this fiction. Personally, I enjoyed this film and have remembered my thesis work on “Computer intelligence and fuzzy logic” I have written in the bachelor degree. Since then I realize and understand that technology enhanced with artificial intelligence is all around us. But this film made me think again on what is the artificial intelligence? How does exponential growth of technology influence on humankind? Does the continual enhancement of artificial intelligence improve or destroy our lives?   

Even though nowadays artificial intelligence is considered to be a neologism it has come a long way from the old days. However, less than a century ago Alan Turing during the Second World War coming up with the idea of a thinking machine made the technological revolution take off. Thus with the invention of computers researchers always tried to make up intelligent machines which would look and act like a human. They are still on the way of creating systems and programs that could mimic human thoughts and actions. Even though there is no completely intelligent machine, the technology is available in a form of robots nowadays. So artificial intelligence (AI) is a computer imitating human behavior and thought and probably the future earthling along with humankind.

Probably it’s left only several years when intelligent robots will be all around us, but even now AI has impacts on our everyday lives. Weather forecasts, Google’s search predictions, voice recognition (Apple’s Siri) and many others are examples of AI programs that react and respond in real time. This exponential growth of technology within the last 10 years is, certainly, making life easier, faster, more comfortable, effective and at the same time dangerous. Dangerous because even smartphones gradually outsmarting people performing all the tasks instead of us and enslaving by making us hardly dependent on them.

StephenHawking warns that “the development of full AI could spell the end of human race” (Sofge, 2015). And Elon Musk predicts that it will soon be “potentially more dangerous than nukes (nuclear weapons)” (Sofge, 2015). Then should we be worried about that some day AI as Ultron would like to bring peace to the world by eliminating Homo sapiens? Hopefully, this is just a scenario of this outstanding fiction. Nevertheless, taking into account that scientists and researchers are interested in AI hugely we cannot avoid of its integration to our daily lives and only wish AI to be beneficial for all.  

Reference 

Sofge E. (2015, March 20). Why artificial intelligence will not obliterate humanity? Retrieved from: http://www.popsci.com/why-artificial-intelligence-will-not-obliterate-humanity