Ø What
are the Major Challenges?
Ø What
are the Main Techniques?
Ø Where
are we failing, and why?
Ø Step
back and look at the Science
Ø Step
back and look at the History of AI
Ø What
are the Major Schools of Thought?
Ø What
of the Future?
Ø “It
is very difficult to make an accurate prediction, especially about the future.”
Ø Main
sources of predictions:
§ AI
Academics
§ Science
Fiction Writers
§ Often
correct…
§ 1945:
geostationary satellites as telecommunications relays
Ø BBC
interview with Rodney Brooks and Ray Kurzweil
Ø Interviewer:
Ø Will
our hyper-intelligent coffee makers in 2050 suddenly decide to kill us like HAL
in 2001?
Or will humans be made redundant by a legion of intelligent machines?
Ø Response:
Ø No.
We will not wake up one day to find our lives populated with all manner of
artificially intelligent devices…
Ø Despite
the rapid advance of technology, the advent of strong AI will be a gradual
process.
By 2020…
Ø Today,
via loyalty cards shop’s computers predict your purchase and order
Ø Soon…
routine insurance claims/loans will be assessed entirely using AI
Ø Intelligent
agents cut out direct human input
Ø key
activities such as surveillance, security, and tracking
Ø No
humans need to be involved
Ø technology
will generate dangers not recognised
Ø …until
it is impossible to reverse them
Ø on
a "J" curve of continued acceleration of change
Compiled reactions from the 742 respondents:
42% agreed
54% disagreed
4% did not respond
The 2006 Pew Internet & American Life/Elon
University Predictions Survey
The Matrix
Scenario
Ø AI
technology able to replace humans at work
Ø Massive
unemployment?
Ø People
gradually spend more and more time in Virtual Worlds
Ø Eventually
forget about “real” world
Ø Example:
World of Warcraft has over 9M subscribers
§ More
than the population of many countries
§ June
2005 child died due to neglect by her World of Warcraft-addicted parents in
Korea
In the future envisaged by the movies, technology
is out to destroy us. But could it really happen?
“The only reason to fear technology is because it
enables people to do bad things to each other ...
but that's happened throughout history.
It's just that the means have arguably become more sophisticated.”
Matthew Kirkcaldie
Rise of the machines?
Ø (fiction)
Skynet is a computer-based defense system
Ø Placed
in control of all U.S. Military's weaponry
Ø Remove
possibility of human error
Ø Skynet
became self-aware
Ø (there
exist a number of sci-fi stories on a similar theme)
Ø Credible?
Rise of the machines - credible?
Ø Much
AI research is funded by military
Ø USS
Vincennes – was put down to human error
Ø What
if it had been computer controlled?
Ø As
AI improves – tendency to give it more control
§ Especially
in time-critical situations
Ø …machines
in control of military hardware seems credible
Ø Machines
losing the plot?
§ Humans
sometimes do… after millions of years of evolution…
§ Maybe
even more likely for machines
§ But
machines unexpectedly becoming intelligent/sentient probably unlikely
Singularity:
Ø The
technological singularity
§ Hypothesized
creation of smarter-than-human entities
§ Machine
can keep augmenting their own mental abilities
§ Seed
AI
§ “The
first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make” –
Irving Good
§ Rapidly
accelerate technological progress
§ Human
beings no longer capable of participating
Ø What
does "smarter-than-human" really mean?
§ We
don't know because we're not that smart
Ø What
happens after the Singularity?
§ Nobody
knows
§ our
model of the future breaks down
Ø Credible?
Some would say ability to predict improves
TRANS
HUMANISM:
Ø Defined
in 1957 by Aldous Huxley’s brother Julian Huxley
“man remaining man, but transcending himself, by
realizing new possibilities of and for his ‘human nature’”
Ø The
use of new sciences and technologies
§ to
enhance human mental and physical abilities and aptitudes
§ ameliorate
undesirable and unnecessary aspects
§ stupidity,
suffering, disease, aging and involuntary death.
Ø Technologies
§ Genetic
engineering
§ Implants,
robotic prostheses
§ Nanotechnology
§ Drugs
§ Possibly
uploading personality to a non-biological substrate
