The rise of Artificial Intelligence has been nothing short of fantastic, and has raced forward in the last few year.
Artificial Intelligence is a branch of computer science concerned with making computers act and think like us. We have always tried to create machines that could think and act like humans, and the field responsible for that is called Artificial Intelligence(AI).
The term was coined in 1956 by John McCarthy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Alan Turing: Father of Artificial Intelligence
AI started in a period when scientist were of the opinion that human intelligence could be imitated by machines by simply instructing it to learn and observe.
Legendary scientist Alan Turing, who is considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence started the research of AI in his seminal 1950 paper called Computing Machinery and Intelligence in which he asked the question “Can Machines Think?” , he later went on to say the question can’t be answer directly.
Turing would later turn it into a research that he called ‘The Imitation Game’, which is popularly known today in Artificial Intelligence as the Turing test.
The basis of turing’s test was very simple but effective as it still used today to test artificial intelligence success.
The test follows thus:
A person sits at a Terminal 1 is set to communicate with another person in Terminal 2 and a computer in Terminal 3, without each parties having knowledge of the location and entity controlling other terminals. Can the person in Terminal 1 in a reasonable time length identify the terminal been controlled by the computer and which is controlled by human?
Then if after various attempts, most people sitting at the terminal can’t identify correctly without guess the terminal controlled by the computer. Then the computer is judged to have passed the Turing test.
Alan Turing is known to have played an important role in WWII, as he helped the Allies defeat the Nazis by cracking intercepted coded messages. It was estimated that Turing’s effort helped reduced the war by more than three years and helped save millions of lives.
During the early days of AI, there was so many setback in the field from 1960s to the early 1900s, but advancement in knowledge & technology has boosted AI in the 21st century and has made it become a very essential and delicate part of the technology industry, due to it’s use in solving complex algorithms.
Why Human Intelligence is Equally Important
Some researchers are made to believe that our brain is a sample of incredible artificial intelligence, but is just a way of achieving intelligence but not the best possible.
“An airplane flies in a way that’s very different from the way a bird flies, but they both fly — it’s the same thing with intelligence,” Peter Stone, an AI researcher and computer scientist at the University of Texas, Austin, told Tech Insider.
Even though machines have been able to surpass us in calculations and memories due to their ability to learn faster, the human brain is still a better agent than AI in aspect such as perceptions, reasoning and manipulation of systems around us.
Over time so many people have talked and warned us about the threat of artificial intelligence to the future of humanity, figures like Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking (most especially).
But are they to be taken seriously? Will a time come on earth where humans can’t be differentiated from AIs? Some in the field like American writer and computer scientist, Ray Kurzweil even think that a time is coming when robots wouldn’t need our help to improve themselves because they would be able to do such and thereby becomes independent from Humans.
But personally i believe Artificial Intelligence is a field that needs to be exploited, as we are far from understanding the nature of human intelligence. If we eventually build systems able to mimic the human intelligence, am pretty sure they would be consume much more power and be far more bigger than the ones we carry everywhere in our head.
Some believe the study of Artificial Intelligence is going to bring apocalyptic events to earth and might be our end, so we should stay clear from the knowledge of the ‘supreme’.
But why should we when AI can help us understand our brain much more better than we currently do. A great scientist once said
What I cannot create, I do not understand.
And don’t forget the study of the brain can help us understand some of the most deadly disease of the brain on the planet, and possibly find a definite cure to them. Report has said that Brain diseases cost the developed economies more than heart diseases, cancer and diabetes put together, not to mention their impact on the quality of life of those affected and their families.
Development of new drugs for brain diseases has been stopped over the years, because for a definite cure to be produced the diseases process has to be understood, which we haven’t been able to really understand the brain itself talk less of the disease infecting it.
What do you think about the future of Artificial Intelligence? Do you also believe it a “Knowledge of the supreme” we should stay clear of? Kindly use the comment box below to have your say!
1 Comment
Very nice article!