05/09/2004 Archived Entry: "A.I."

The ultimate goal of artificial intelligence seems to be recreation of the human mind. Rationalisation being that the human mind is the most complex and advanced one we know of and have a working model for.

I'm as yet undecided in which is more egotistical, thinking that the human mind is the only goal worth pursuing or that it is impossible to replicate. Someone once said that unless there is a physical law stating that something cannot be accomplished then science or nature will find a way to do it, and you really shouldn't not concur with that.

Plausibility aside, say that we were able to create a machine that functioned in every way like a human, but worked at the speed of a computer. With processing speeds doubling every 18 months, such a being would be able to evolve at the speed of technological advancement and would certainly not take long to surpass humans who are limited by nature's slow progress. In this regard, a technological being would be much closer to bacteria, able to evolve pass any obstacle well within a human's lifespan. Machines are made to do things better, faster, and more efficiently than people. To have a human like machine is, inevitably, to have a better human.

It is the height of conceit to believe that any sufficiently advanced robot (as vague a description as that is) would desire to be exactly like us. Fictional automatons are always depicted as exhibiting some misguided need to belong when they are clearly superior, their only "flaw" being a lack of some human trait. I don't see the need nor usefulness in trying to teach a program something as human as humour. The duplication of human behaviour in machines seems to be more of an end onto itself, a challenge to digitize something we can only vaguely understand, and a monument to our egos.

Replies: 6 comments

Feelings in AI is so that they can market Robotic girlfriends/boyfriends for those that can't deal with real people!!!

Posted by Anonymous @ 05/09/2004 07:43 PM EST

That was one of your better posts, good job! It was interesting from start to finish :P

However, I really don't think it'll ever be possible to create a machine which can think and act like a human. I mean, humans are spontaneous, and unpredictable...on the other hand -- no matter what happens a machine is still a machine... and that means that somewhere along the span of its creation, there was a human who was in charge of making it. Due to that reason alone, there must have been some restrictions (technological or just, impossible) that limited the way the robot was made in some form or another. If you think of the code used to program this "realistic human A.I." in the form of a tree diagram, it can only stretch so far with steps programmed in (Ie: X happens, options A,B,C..etc open up, robot pics one.. process repeats)

You can't just program a robot to "evolve" on its own.

But, that's just me. I mean, if it were ever possible... then obviously it'd be something we don't understand right now in our stage of logic and human understanding.

Posted by Dave @ 05/09/2004 09:40 PM EST

on a semi related note, whoever decided to cast Will Smith in an Issac Asimov movie should be hung in a public place for all to see.

Posted by Mike @ 05/11/2004 05:09 PM EST

C'mon, the law of being human is that of least effort for most gain. This includes the services, education, etc. Well, if you had a 'robot' teaching you, you most certainly would like it to have a sense of humour.

One of the problems with recreating humans 'exactly' is that we'd create machines that're just as lazy as we are...

Posted by Arshwana @ 05/11/2004 11:27 PM EST

Sometimes, I feel as though I do have robots teaching me.

We're not ALL lazy, I think a robot version of Joe would probably the most efficient being on Earth.

Posted by tl4tran @ 05/13/2004 03:23 PM EST

err...that's what I get for logging in at school

Posted by Rayne @ 05/13/2004 03:23 PM EST