Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the sub-field of computer science devoted to creating machines able to perform tasks associated with human intelligence. There are two forms of theoretical AI: narrow, soft, or weak AI, and general, or strong AI. Soft AI is inspired by the human brain but doesn’t seek to mimic it—it’s a statistically oriented computer intelligence able to sort through vast reams of data with algorithms to perform tasks like playing chess, answering Jeopardy questions, taking reservations, and giving GPS directions. The tasks these AIs perform are achieved in ways bearing little resemblance to human thinking patterns.

Strong AI is designed to mimic human intelligence in reasoning, planning, learning, vision, and natural language conversations. Proponents for strong AI hope to achieve singularity, a point in which machine intelligence matches and exceeds human intelligence, after which technological progress willrapidly accelerate and we will be unable to predict or even comprehend the future development of civilization.

Entrepreneur Elon Musk is vocal about the risks of artificial intelligence: “In the movie Terminator, they didn’t create A.I. to—they didn’t expect, you know some sort of Terminator-like outcome. It is sort of like the Monty Python thing: Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition. It’s just—you know, but you have to be careful.” He’s far from alone. Bill Gates has expressed concern, and even Stephen Hawking sees reasons to be worried: “The primitive forms of artificial intelligence we already have, have proved very useful. But I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Once humans develop artificial intelligence it would take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.”

Many scientists dismiss these fears as overblown and believe that the development of machine intelligence will be complementary to humanityrather than replacing it outright.