Shades of Artificial Intelligence What is human intelligence? The dictionary states it is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. Artificial intelligence is defined as the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. You will notice they are virtually the same, but there is certainly a big difference between humans and machines. No matter how smart a machine may be, it will never have a conscience, it can only have a logarithm simulating what a programmer thinks a conscience might be. There are many things to consider when programming artificial intelligence into a device. One thing which never seems to be mentioned is the state of the person who was doing the programming. If we look at the human race, we can’t help but notice as a whole we are not all rational. Some of us are criminals, some of us have mental illness and some of us are just plain odd. Programmers are a small sample of humans and they probably possessed the same faults in the same ratio as the rest of the human race. One may wonder what I’m getting at here, but it is very simple. Artificial intelligence may operate differently depending on who programs it. For example, if we had someone who had a severe mental illness program artificial intelligence into a device, it could cause a problem. Not all people have the same standards either. What one person may think is unacceptable may not bother another at all. Humans are notorious for not agreeing with each other. We just have to look at all the wars we have fought against each other to prove this point. If one programmer programs artificial intelligence to suit his or her morals, it doesn’t mean it would be the same type of programming if a different programmer programmed the same device. One might say these programmers have to abide by the master plan, but let me remind you that master plan was created by a human being and one master-plan and one place could be completely different than another master-plan. There has been a debate going on for many years over using artificial intelligence and weapons. One side believes we should never allow a machine to decide who lives and dies, but the other side doesn’t worry about this. One side says we have to have a human in the loop to prevent accidents or unnecessary destruction of life, the other side says we don’t worry about collateral damage. Recently China started selling small helicopters which are driven by artificial intelligence. These helicopters are loaded with weapons and the artificial intelligence in the helicopter decides who should be attacked and who should not. I know I’m oversimplifying the situation, but I think you get the idea. These small helicopters are being sold to different countries and one I remember was Saudi Arabia. China has been making all sorts of drones lately and some are saying it is taking over the market. It seems China has also sold these drones to Iran. What is going to happen if one of these drones from Iran or China open fire on American troops ships or planes? Are we going to get into a war that was started by artificial intelligence? We may hear the attacking countries use excuses like they didn’t know what happened because they didn’t order the drones to shoot but how will we take excuses like that? Some people think artificial intelligence is more dangerous than nuclear weapons. Some computer companies like IBM have expressed concern that artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence in just a few more years. We know what it’s like in digital form, that is created with digital parts like the current computers we all use, but what will it be like when we go to quantum computers? Will that make artificial intelligence so powerful that compared to us it will be like a God? As our devices which are capable of creating artificial intelligence get more powerful, will they start to build devices we cannot understand which are intelligent? Industry wants smart machines to be able to build and repair other smart machines. This cuts humans out of the loop. In the long run is this a good idea? We have long thought the danger with artificial intelligence will be it will eventually wipe us out, but this may not be the case at all. What it might do is decide it knows what’s better for us than we know for ourselves. It might force us to eat certain foods we normally wouldn’t, exercise in ways it feels a more beneficial to us and make sure we are properly medicated. While some of this may sound advantageous on the surface, it really isn’t. Humans are supposed to have free will and that includes deciding what we want for ourselves. We may not want to take certain medicines for example, we may feel they have certain unwanted side effects and as far as the selection of food goes, some of the things the machine might think is good for us nutritionally we may consider gross. I know I wouldn’t want a machine deciding what my life would be like, would you? We could become virtual prisoners in our own homes. We may want to go out late and some artificial intelligence controlling the house may decide if we do, we will get enough sleep and lock us in. It could turn out to be worse than living in a communist regime. One has to wonder what this would do to the rest of the systems we have in place in our country such as the criminal justice system, the military system and others. Eventually artificial intelligence also known as AI may feel if someone commits a crime there is no place for them and has them executed. In its mind it might think it was doing this for the common good. We humans have to be very aware an AI has to be controlled and many safeguards have to be put into place so it doesn’t go off on its own and start making its own decisions which could affect a myriad of things. It has long been the dream of humans to create a robot which is incredibly smart that could be taken on space missions. This may or may not be a good idea. It seems like a good idea when we first think about it, but would this robot start creating other ones of its ilk and eventually they would outnumber us and take over? We are going to have to be very careful in the future when we are dealing with artificial intelligence.
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