Dan showed us a seven-minute film exploring artificial intelligence, and it got deep, quite literally, emotional deep. For someone who feels quite distanced from this development, it still manages to sneak into the think-tank once in a while. For now, we seem to have a stranglehold on the development of artificial intelligence, but that is a pretty uninformed opinion. I have often found myself considering what would happen if someone ever so slightly messed up the specifics and led us into an age of computer-men and women who owned pet robotic dogs and cats and didn’t need to eat anything, just relaxed, but eventually declared a war or something…
It’s kind of funny to think about artificially intelligent robots being the next ‘species’ that inhabits the earth. It’s funny because as ludicrous as it sounds, it probably could happen and would be a huge kick in the face to all of humanity. To quote Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should”.
There’s no denying the usefulness of what AI can achieve, but it is certainly an area that requires some caution. Computer scientist Stuart Russel recently expressed his concerns in an interview with Quanta Magazine, which can be read here. Along with the interview was this video featuring DQN, an artificial neural network developed by researchers at Google DeepMind, which teaches itself to play Atari games such as Breakout. Over time it develops sophisticated strategies.
There is a lot of development required in artificial intelligence, and I think we are a long way off from constructing a robotified human as featured in the short video. But the mystery behind AI is still very intriguing. The technological world has its ways of surprising us, and can only continue to do so.
My friend Jack wrote this song inspired by Artificial Intelligence. Fittingly titled A.I.lien. “The beast becomes the prodigy…”
Kara:
– Gabriel