Αrtificial intelligence is a prevalent theme within science fiction.
From an ominous computer system that's gone rogue in 2001 a Space Odyssey:
To a giant sarcastic chunk of metal in Interstellar.
And an evidence-licking Android detective in the video game Detroit become human
Simply the idea, the thought that a computer system can possess the same
level of intelligence as a human being it's fascinating to us and is also the
reason for AI's popularity in pop culture. Of course, this same idea is
surrounded by controversies. We as humans are afraid of the possibility of an AI
surpassing us. What will happen if an AI is programmed to do something beneficial
but it develops a destructive method for achieving its goal therefore possibly
eradicating humanity? To be honest we shouldn't have to worry about such
scenarios for a couple more decades. What we should worry about is the identity
problem that comes with AI. Could a computer or robot be a person, a
being that at least under normal circumstances is a thinker and an agent
responsible for its thoughts emotions and actions?
The term artificial intelligence is applied when machine mimics cognitive
functions as humans associate with other human minds such as learning and
problem-solving. It is a common misconception that
artificial intelligence is any computer system that responds to user action.
People often confuse AI with "if statements". An if statement is hard-coded
inside a program which means that it can't change throughout time. The
difference between AI and an "if statement" is that a true artificially-intelligent
system is one that can learn on its own. True AI can improve on past iterations
getting smarter and more aware, allowing it to enhance its capabilities and its
knowledge.
There are three basic levels of Artificial Intelligence. The first level is called
Narrow Artificial Intelligence. Narrow AI is programmed to perform a single task and
works within a limited context. It is very good at routine physical and
cognitive jobs. Examples of such AI include Google's
translate engine or self-driving cars. The second level is called artificial
general intelligence or AGI for short. It's an AI system with generalized
cognitive abilities which can find solutions to any unfamiliar task it
comes across. Engineers haven’t yet created such an AI and cannot predict
when it will be engineered. Finally there is artificial superintelligence.
ASI refers to a computer system whose ‘thought process’ will surpass that of
humans. We don't know whether creating an AI this advanced is possible but it is
predicted that when AGI is invented and using its help it will take us a couple
of months or even weeks to achieve such a goal.
Artificial intelligence has already taken over our daily lives. Every single
day we use AI without even thinking about it. One such example are virtual
assistants. A virtual assistant is a software agent that can perform tasks or
services for individual. Virtual assistants on our smartphones like Siri
Google assistant or Alexa are considered a form of Pseudo AI, that is, they only
learn from users to some extent. As of 2017
the capabilities and usage of virtual assistants are expanding rapidly with
new products entering the market and a strong emphasis on voice user interfaces.
AI is also used by Google in order to collect data from every search, query,
translation or document ever uploaded. Every time you look up a question
Google answers it before you even finish typing it. Services like Spotify or
Netflix also use AI to recommend new music or series. They do not only factor
into account data like the genre of the series but also how many times you’ve watched it,
how many times you’ve rewound a scene, at what time of day you watched each
episode and so on. These myriad behaviors, when correlated
and assessed over millions of other users, help to coax out the best
recommendations. Self-driving cars have become a reality in recent years.
Autonomous cars combine a variety of sensors to perceive their surroundings
such as radar, computer vision, GPS and odometry. Advanced control systems
interpret this information to identify appropriate navigation paths as well as
obstacles and relevant signage. AI driven cars also have way lower accident rates
than normal ones.
The Turing Test, developed by Alan Turing in 1950, is a test of a machines ability
to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to or indistinguishable from
that of a human. Turing proposed that a human person
would just language conversations between a human and a machine designed
to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware that one of
the two partners in the conversation is a machine and all participants would be
separated from one another. If the evaluator could not reliably tell
the machine from the human, the machine would be said to have passed the test.
The first AI that passed the Turing test did so on June 7th 2014.
Since then we have created a couple of robots that can do the things they are
programmed to almost indistinguishable from humans.
In automated journalism, also known as algorithmic or robotic journalism, news
articles are generated by computer programs. These programs interpret,
organize and present data in human readable ways. The output can also be
customized to fit a certain voice, tone or style. Robots have been used to write
articles for a couple of years now. See if you can guess which article was
written by a human and which one by a robot. The answer will be at the end of
the video.
Scientists also trained an AI to write poetry and now it's standing
toe-to-toe with Shakespeare. A group of IBM researchers in Australia in
partnership with the University of Toronto and the University of Melbourne
have developed an algorithm capable of writing poetry. Far from your generic
rhymes, this AI actually follows the rules
taking meter into account as it weaves its words. One of Google's artificial
intelligence projects is now also accidentally writing poetry, after its
attempt to digest romance novels. Here are the two poems.
Robots have also created other forms of art such as the painting Edmond de
Bellamy, created in 2018. "Was the painting good?" I hear you asking. Well not
really, but it was still entirely made by a robot so I guess it's worth $400,000.
maybe
Apart from art, Google is using its artificial intelligence program called
"google deepmind" in order to help in medical research. A major milestone has
already been made for the treatment of eye disease. The results show that
google's AI system can quickly interpret eyes scans from routine clinical practice
with unprecedented accuracy. It can correctly recommend how patients should
be referred for treatment for over 50 sight threatening diseases as accurately
as world leading expert doctors. Many of you have played around with
text-to-speech engines. You input some text and then a robotic voice will read
it out loud. Synthesized speech until now was created
by concatenating pieces of recorded speech that were stored in a database.
This makes it difficult to modify the voice without recording a whole new
database. Google has using its own deep mind
program created a realistic text-to-speech engine called "wavenet".
Wavenet changes this paradigm by directly modeling the raw waveform
of the audio signal, one sample at a time. As well as yielding more natural
sounding speech, using raw waveforms means that wavenet can model any kind of
audio, including music. Here's a comparison of normal text-to-speech and
Google's wavenet.
Google Wavenet can also generate gibberish that sounds like a normal language
Google is planning to use said engine for an automated calling machine embedded
inside Google assistant called Google Duplex. Here's some footage of Duplex
reserving a table at a restaurant. Keep in mind that this is natural
conversation between a robot and a human.
If all that wasn't enough, Hanson Robotics, a Hong kong based engineering
and robotics company has created a humanoid robot called Sofia, which has
acquired citizenship in Saudi Arabia, a very controversial move since women in
Saudi Arabia have virtually no rights. She's able to display more than 50
facial expressions and observe the world around her exactly like humans do.
Scientists and engineers have forever warned against the dangers of AI. In
January 2015, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and dozens of
artificial intelligence experts signed an open letter on artificial intelligence
calling for research on its societal impacts. If at some point we manage to
create super intelligent AI, it is 100% certain that we will also reache what
is called a "technological singularity". According to this hypothesis, the AI
would enter a runaway reaction of self improvement cycles with each new and
more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an
intelligence explosion. To put it into perspective, an average person's IQ level
is around 100. Einstein's and Stephen Hawking's IQ levels are around 160 each.
If a superintelligent AI is ever invented, it won't have an IQ score. It
will constantly evolve and improve itself until it reaches said
technological singularity. Are there any ethical dilemmas in continuing?
Will a kill-switch be needed? What will be left for us to do once AI has
taken over scientific research? All of these are questions we don't have an
answer to. We should, however, be more careful while moving into the future in
order to not be overwhelmed by our own progress. Thanks for watching!
