Artificial Intelligence Research Paper

Oddett Gonzalez
Moberg
English 120
Research Paper - Final Draft
Nov 12, 2014
Artificial Intelligence
We live in a world that has been around for 4.5 billion years, and through out the existence of Earth their have been many changes and advancements made. One of the most popular and most controversial advancements is technology. The topic of advancements in technology can be very broad, as there are advancements in different types of technology, but this paper will focus on the development of Artificial Intelligence. You may ask yourself what is Artificial Intelligence? According to Science Daily "the modern definition of artificial intelligence is 'the study and design of intelligent agents' where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximizes its chances of success". Artificial Intelligence or A. I. is the theory and development of computer systems that are capable of performing tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. Imagine a robot, like in Disney's WALL-E who is able to do what any human can do, but at a greater scale.
Origins of AI
"Our history is full of attempts—nutty, eerie, comical, earnest, legendary and real—to make artificial intelligences, to reproduce what is the essential us—bypassing the ordinary means. Back and forth between myth and reality, our imaginations supplying what our workshops couldn't, we have engaged for a long time in this odd form of self-reproduction." (McCorduck p. 3) It may seem as if the idea of artificial intelligence is a recent thing but the intellectual roots of A.I, and the concept of intelligent machines can be found in Greek Mythology. The Greek God Hephaestus and his creation of Talos a giant man made of bronze incorporated the idea of intelligent robots, and Pandora who was the first human woman created by the gods, specifically Hephaestus and Athena, can be seen as an example of an artificial being. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is another example of an artificial being. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein considers this issue in the ethics of artificial intelligence: if a machine can be created that has intelligence, could it also feel? If it can feel, does it have the same rights as a human? This is called Robot rights. During a personal Interview I asked my classmate Julianna what she thought about the future development of robots with the emotions and feelings. Julianna believes that when an Artificially Intelligent specimen is given emotion it must be given rights. There is a vast difference between a robot who follows a command at a push of a button, and a robot that has its own emotions and thoughts. She believes that an A. I. who doesn't have its own feelings can be controlled to do what ever the creators like, but a robot with emotions who is basically human should have its right, taking control of it would be a form slavery.
Modern AI
The field of A. I. research was founded at a conference on the campus of Dartmouth College in the summer of 1956. The attendees, including John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon, who later became the leaders of A. I. research for many decades. John McCarthy, created the term Artificial Intelligence and defined it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines."
A. I. that we use today
If you have a certain understanding of AI, you would most likely imagine a robotic toy as a type of A. I. that we use today. But did you ever stop and ask yourselves of any other A. I. that we use? Siri is a form of A. I. that we use today, it may not be strong but it has been program to respond and help with request in an intelligent matter. There are some limitations to what Siri can do, but with more updates comes more features and I can see Siri being more helpful and intelligent in the future. Recommendation systems that are given to you on YouTube, Amazon, and other websites is a form of AI. Google Translate is another example of A. I. that we have access too and that is commonly used.
Strong AI
Strong A. I. will be equal to people in all respects, it will be able to do what any normal person can do and it will have consciousness in some common sense. Computers can reason but they don't know about the world. Unlike humans, robots can't experience the world like we do. The human brain is complex entity, and it is hard to capture it through engineering. Scientist think that for a robot to have the same comprehension and understanding as humans it must build itself from observing the world. Animals and people do this by learning, our brain built it self by learning. This brings us to the topic of brain emulation. Brain emulation or mind uploading is the hypothetical process of copying the mental content from a human brain and copying it to a robot, AI, or any computational device. If brain emulation ever became a reality scientist would be able to take a scan of a humans brain and transfer it on to a robot or droid and hopefully this way the A. I. would have a consensus of emotions such as love, passion, and fear. .
Survey
I got a total of 6 responses on my Artificial Intelligence Survey; here are some of my results.









For the most part, the respondents had some sort of idea of what A. I. is. I asked the respondents what they though was the definition of Artificial Intelligence and 5/6 answered Robots. Only one respondent answered with "the use of smart technology that can beat man kind". Half of the respondents from the same survey said that they didn't want to be in a world were artificial intelligence was very prevalent. The other half said that they would like to live in a world where artificial intelligence was prevalent. The negating side didn't want to be in a world with A. I. because they didn't want the world to be dominated by A. I. one day. The respondents who where okay with A. I. in a near future thought that this type of technological advancement would help improve the quality of life, as well as make it easier for them to be lazy, that "A. I. will happen one day, its inevitable".
Perspectives for future research
The end goal is to have machines that are as capable and flexible as humans are. A sufficiently powerful A. I. could develop new medical technologies capable of saving millions of human lives (Yudkowsky p. 9). A. I. can help better diagnoses to patients, and provide greater and safer treatments for surgery. A. I. can replace public transportation and automobiles, it will end up causing people to lose jobs, but it would overall be better for safety. Intelligent personal assistants like Siri or Google Now will be capable of completing more advanced task with just a voice command, like making a reservation at a restaurant or booking a plane ticket. Once computers become cheap enough, the vast majority of jobs will be performable by Artificial Intelligence more easily than by humans. A sufficiently powerful A. I. would even be better than us at math, engineering, music, art, and all the other jobs we consider meaningful.
Drawbacks of A. I.
Silicon Valley's resident futurist, Elon Musk, recently said artificial intelligence is "potentially more dangerous than nukes." And Stephen Hawking, one of the smartest people on earth, wrote that successful A. I. "would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last." There is a long list of computer experts who are also fearful of a rogue robot-infested future (Bilton). Some problems that could come with artificial intelligence, which leads experts like Musk and Hawking to worry, is that we are starting to create machines that can make decisions and do tasks like humans, but these machines don't have morality and it is possible that scientist wont be able to emulate it to an A. I. . Another problem that could be faced is is how these technologies will be used, if for example the military used A. I. it could cause a lot of damage to our world and it's not hard to imagine countries engaging in an arms race to make unfriendly A. I. built specifically to kill.
Why is A. I. Relevant to Our Society?
Artificial intelligence is a goal for researchers, and the subject of endless works for writers and filmmakers. Despite the best science fiction visions, creating artificial intelligence is incredibly difficult. The universe is a very complicated place, and humans have had millions of years to evolve and to gain the ability to navigate and make sense of it. No matter how we get there, it is certain that artificial intelligence will have tremendous impact on our society and economy, and lead us down a path towards evolving our own definitions of humanity. A. I. is something that is going to be achieved one day in time and once it has become a reality our world will change drastically, it will become a different social world. Robots are immortal, they can travel around the world with a push of a button, and their encoding could be uploaded and sent to a different robot body across the world. Humans may even have the choice of emulating themselves and becoming droids. Social change is bound to happen, and it will continue to happen though time. Original foragers choose to stay as foragers or decided to leave and become farmers. Our ancestors experienced and lived in a different time with different values, and our decedents will also have different values
Conclusion
I didn't know what A. I. was three months ago, I knew about robots and drones from movies and books but I never thought that it was something that scientist were working on currently. I learned about Artificial Intelligence in my Psychology class this year and this topic has interested me since then. I don't know if I will be alive to witness AI, but I do hope to see more advancement in the future. The first glimpse I really had of artificial life such as robots and androids was from a dystopian book series called The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyers that I read. This series follows the lives of different characters but the first book in the series Cinder follows a cyborg girl, Linh Cinder. Cinder was born human and was in a terrible accident as a child, and not all of her made it through the crash and fire. She was given robotic parts to replace and fix the burnt and damaged parts of her body, in the end she 36.28% not human. Linh Cinder's augmentations include brain-computer interface with access to the Net, an internal lie detector, optical implants, a prosthetic left hand with bonus functionalities, a prosthetic left calf with a secret compartment, and a prosthetic left foot. Cinder went through a difficult ordeal, but she was able to surpass it due to the technology in her time. In the Artificial Intelligence a Modern Approach it has been predicted that humans and machines will merge in the future into cyborgs that are more capable and powerful than either (Russell p. 963). This idea is called transhumanism, and it's not be confused with brain emulation. Brain emulation involves scanning a human's brain and using it for an A. I. so that it can have human like emotions and feelings. Transhumanism is enhancing a human by developing technologies that greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. Right now in our current world and time there are scientists, engineers, and inventors who are conduction research and experiments to make what Cinder had a reality. They may have not reached the capability of creating a computer for a brain, but as time goes on more advancements are being made towards these types of technologies.














Work Cited

"Artificial Intelligence." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.
"AITopics." History. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.
"AITopics." Brief History. A. I. Topics, n.d. Web. 04 Nov. 2014.
Juliana. "Artificial Intelligence." Personal interview. 14 Nov. 2014.
The Rise of Artificial Intelligence " Off Book " PBS Digital Studios. Perf. Ernest Davis, Yann LeCann, Robin Hanson, Gary Marcus. YouTube. PBSofbook, 11 July 2013. Web. 04 Nov. 2014.
Gonzalez, Oddett. "Artificial Intelligence" Survey. Survey Monkey. 23 October 2014. Web.
Yudkowsky, Eliezer. 2008. "Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk." In Global Catastrophic Risks , edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Ćirković, 308–345. New York: Oxford University Press.
McCorduck, Pamela. Machines Who Think: A Personal Inquiry into the History and Prospects of Artificial Intelligence. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1979. Print.
Russell, Stuart J. (Stuart Jonathan), and Peter Norvig. Artificial Intelligence a Modern Approach/ Stuart Russell ; Peter Norvig. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003. pp 963. Print.
Bilton, Nick. "Artificial Intelligence as a Threat." The New York Times. The New York Times, 05 Nov. 2014. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.


Letter to the Editor

If you have a certain understanding of AI, you would most likely imagine a robotic toy as a type of A. I. that we use today. But did you ever stop and ask yourselves of any other A. I. that we use? Siri is a form of A. I. that we use today, it may not be strong but it has been program to respond and help with request in an intelligent matter. In your article you focus more on Strong A. I. which would be equal to people in all respects, it will be able to do what any normal person can do and it will have consciousness in some common sense. There is a vast difference between a robot that follows a command at a push of a button, and a robot that has its own emotions and thoughts. It is unknown now if it will ever be possible to give A. I. morality, but it's important to keep in mind that yes these machine can be used for bad, but they can also bring much improvement to our world as long as they are used for good.
Gonzalez 10