MAN OR MACHINE? PART 1: HUMAN OR ROBOT?
Movies like AI and the Matrix offer glimpses of what artificial intelligence holds for the future. Some say it will have a great impact on medical research.
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Today, artificial intelligence flies airplanes, makes financial decisions and aids in medical diagnoses.
Ray Kurzweil says the key to AI is pattern recognition. It's what made the electronic keyboard he invented with stevie wonder possible and his reading machine.
Pattern recognition is what he calls the heart of human intelligence.
Ray Kurzweil
Author/Futurist/Inventor
Kurzweil Tech, Inc.
Wellesley Hills, MA
"You know, we look at a face and there's all kinds of complex calculations involved in recognizing and we do it instantly, and ultimately, our machines will have equal and, in fact, even greater powers of pattern recognition."
He predicts as we reach a greater understanding of the brain, AI will advance even more.
Ray Kurzweil
"We'll be able to essentially recreate the powers of human intelligence and combine them with the speed, accuracy and knowledge-sharing ability of machines."
Emotion is one quality still separating man from machine. But Eric Chown is working to narrow even this gap. He's reprogramming Aibo to feel emotions.
A touch on his face is pleasure, his ear pushed forward - pain. His behaviors change with each emotion.
Eric Chown, Ph.D.
Computer Scientist
Bowdoin College
Brunswick, ME
"I'm trying to show that this emotional system can be understood and we can start to make some real progress in learning how to deal with people who are emotional."
This could prove helpful in treating conditions like Alzheimer's Disease.
Eric Chown, Ph.D.
"What we would like to do is understand what's going wrong in that patient's head."
At MIT, Charlie Kemp is programming his computer to have common sense.
Charlie Kemp
"Common sense is not something we as people can teach because it's all automatic for us."
He predicts we will eventually go beyond humans teaching computers.
Charlie Kemp
MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
Cambridge, MA
"We will be able to work better together, whereas now it's pretty much humans, you know, slamming away at some computer, trying to get it to do something."
In the future these experts predict humans and machines will actually merge. Humans will think using non-biological intelligence.
Ray Kurzweil
"We'll have billions of nanobots in the capillaries of our brains, communicating wirelessly with our biological neurons, with the Internet, with each other, and basically expanding human intelligence and experience."
Kurzweil calls it evolution.
Ray Kurzweil
"It's not some alien invasion of intelligent machines. It's coming from within our civilization. It expands our own intellectual powers."
Just as the primates probably could not have predicted our civilization, few of us can imagine what evolution will bring next.
Kurzweil predicts the merger of our intelligence with artificial intelligence will happen as soon as the 2020's, and perhaps by 2030, the artificial portion of our brains will dominate. He points out the merger has already begun as people with Parkinson's Disease are being treated with electrodes implanted in the brain.
BACKGROUND: Today, artificial intelligence helps airplanes fly, makes financial decisions, and helps diagnosis medical conditions. Tom Mitchell, president of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, says this about AI: "Ever since computers were invented, it has been natural to wonder whether they might be able to learn. Imagine computers learning from medical records to discover emerging trends in the spread and treatment of new diseases, houses learning from experience to optimize energy costs based on the particular usage patterns of their occupants, or personal software assistants learning the evolving interests of their users to highlight especially relevant stories from the online morning newspaper." The AAAI describes artificial intelligence as "the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines." Experts say AI is going to be increasingly important in our lives and it won't be long before AI allows man to increase his levels of intelligence.
AI IN THE FUTURE: Author, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil divides AI into two types, narrow AI and strong AI. He says what we have now is narrow AI. Strong AI, he says, is "machines that can emulate the full range of diversity and subtlety of human intelligence I feel that within 25 years, we will really understand how the human brain works. We'll have very powerful computers that can recreate those processes." He says AI will be able to expand the reaches of human intelligence and we're going to literally merge with our machines. He anticipates, in the future, people will have nanobots (tiny robots) in their brains that will allow them to communicate with the Internet and with each other. Also, these will allow thinking to be done at a rate that is impossible now, given the limitations of our brains. The human brain works using interneuronal connections that have a signaling speed of 200 calculations per second – a speed 100 million-times slower than electronic circuits. "Ultimately," says Kurzweil, "when computers can emulate human forms of intelligence, they'll be able to combine it with this tremendous speed."
AI IN MEDICINE: Currently, AI is already being used to help treat some medical conditions. For example, many patients with Parkinson's disease can be considered cyborgs because they have neural implants that replace the damaged biological neurons and these communicate with healthy biological neurons. Currently, this must be done with surgery but Kurzweil expects intelligent machines will be introduced through the bloodstream in the future.
Eric Chown, Ph.D., at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, is working to teach emotions to a robot – one characteristic still separating man from machine. The goal is to get a better understanding of how emotions impact behaviors and eventually use this information to help people with dementia or Alzheimer's disease function better in their environment.
Kurzweil Technologies, Inc.
15 Walnut Street
Wellesley Hills, MA 02481
(781) 263-0000
www.kurzweilai.net
Copyright © 2003 Ivanhoe Broadcast News, Inc.
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