Ever since Alan Turing invented Turing tests in 1936, the speed of development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been accelerating. Sjors Broersen from Deloitte at the guest lecture introduced three phases of AI: Assisted Intelligence, Augmented Intelligence, and Autonomous Intelligence. Autonomous Intelligence is when an AI decides and executes autonomously.
Autonomous Intelligence may sound like a science fiction since the IQ of AI currently is barely as good as an infant. However, considering the development that goes exponentially, it is not that unfathomable. Stephen Hawking had warned the world multiple times that we should be alert of AI and he had also addressed that AI will be ‘either best or worst thing’ for humanity.
Human brain is complex. It is the product of thousands of years evolutionary process. How we train AI is different from software engineering where we program the machine to perform and the machine does nothing else but what we told it to. We program AI to learn from examples, almost the same way how human kids are learning the world. It may sound absurd, but in my opinion, in this way, it is possible to use computer technology to compress the evolutionary process of 10,000 years in a relatively shorter period of time to evolve a human brain equivalent intelligence, since believe or not, artificial intelligence is in a few aspects superior to human.
First of all, speed is incomparable. The neurons in the human brain transmit information for more than a hundred meters in a second, but computer does it in the speed of light. Second, it is the amount of storage. For a human brain, no matter how many billions of neurons you have, your storage is limited, but the computer has theoretically unlimited storage. More importantly, the biggest advantage of human beings is that we cooperate. We have used collective power defeating all the other threatening species in the world in the past. However, computers are even better. They were created as a collective product because we want them to be connected so that we can make use of the network. In another word, all computer in the world is a family. All the computers can easily share the same knowledge just by transmitting and loading the same programs or files. Therefore, AI’s collective collaboration is much higher than humans. Not to say that AIs do not have selfish, embarrassing nor jealousy emotions (yet) that prevent them from sharing. Last but not least, human brain is incomparable with the computer in terms of stability and reliability. We get tired and sick from time to time, but the computer can technically run at peak level 24/7.
Once you see through these differences between the human brain and AI, you can take a wild guess how it is going to go once the evolution of the computer has embarked on the first level where the direction is correct. It may be particularly slow at first, only to reach the intelligent level of a mouse. In several decades, it is possible to reach the level of a human baby. You may think the AI is still handicapped at this point, but once the AI reach that level, going further will not be that big of an issue anymore. For example, reaching a normal three or four-year-old child’s intelligence may take only a few years. Then it may reach the level of normal human intelligence or the level of intelligence like Einstein may only take about a year. Then it really starts to grow on its own in the speed we cannot imagine. The IQ difference between an idiot and a genius might be just IQ 60 and IQ 140. Can you even imagine an intelligence level of IQ 13000? At that time, the gap between us and AI will be like the gap between an ant and us. We can never figure out what the AI is thinking.
There is a book written by Kevin Kelly, called “What Technology Wants”. In that book, the author described technology as the seventh life form on this planet (the first six are animals, plants and four kinds of microorganisms). We all know AI is what human beings created without biological activities. However, Kevin Kelly argues that technology is a life that matches all the characteristics of life. Human beings are nothing more than the parents and the caregivers of the first stage of their lives. Technology will eventually make its own progress of evolution for its own life, and by that time humans can no longer control technology.
This definitely gives a whole different but interesting perspective. If it really happens in the far future that AI takes over the world, from a historical perspective, it may not be a bad thing in my opinion. By its name “Artificial”, the intelligence is derived from human. Then AI will be the continuation of the honorable human intelligence to exist in the universe. I mean, I know dinosaurs did not really leave much intelligent legacy behind, right?
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/19/stephen-hawking-ai-best-or-worst-thing-for-humanity-cambridge
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/30/rise-of-robots-evil-artificial-intelligence-uc-berkeley
https://canvas.eur.nl/courses/29641/files/14323733?module_item_id=358954
