AI vs. Humans

One of the more intriguing questions posed today by technology is what will become of Artificial Intelligence? Or, will AI eventually replace humans?

It leads almost immediately to at least three other questions. What is intelligence? What is artificial? And what is human intelligence? You might think up others, but we can start here.

Overall, the question is not will AI make a lot of progress. Surely we will see even smarter phones, smarter robots, and more recently, smarter cars. But how much smarter? Will they “replace” humans? That’s the question. This is what Alan Turing was trying to get at in 1950 when he asked ‘Will machines think?’

This gets to the core. But, just what is human nature, my favorite subject, in case you haven’t guessed it through my posts? We can start with AI and project forward, or we can start with our nature and compare what we do and how we think and see the prospects ahead. I prefer to begin by seeing what we do best as humans and then surmising if AI can catch up.

In no particular order, here are some of the things we do best:

            - Expressing ourselves, including our inner thoughts

            - Balancing our lives in many dimensions

            - Creating new forms, even smarter devices

            - Solving problems, even new challenges not seen before

            - Thinking Big Ideas

            - Be inspired and inspiring others

            - Getting the best ideas from many people

            - Improving our world

First, AI might, like Siri or Watson, mouth these ideas, but can they, or even will they, accomplish any of these? Will they even generate these big ideas and know what they mean, and thereby make the world a better place?

Second, the word “intelligence” needs some defining. I do not define it as IQ, which is just a way of predicting how one will do in school, its original purpose. In my opinion, intelligence, is the ability to solve challenges in one’s life, and how successful you do this will determine, in large part, how successful your life will be.

AI doesn’t have to feel contented, all they need is more oil to keep the mechanical parts moving or more power to keep the code sequences flowing. I guess they would have to figure out how to create oil and power to best what we humans can do. And if we run out of oil or power, what would AI do? It would be a big enough challenge for us, but AI? And could they create an alternative to oil and power, as perhaps we might have to do at some point in the future?

Third, would AI entities have different experiences, so the collective best could be had from all the possibilities? Or would each AI entity contain all the possibilities?

Fourth, I can’t imagine AI having any fun. Maybe that’s not the end all, but it sure helps us to get through life. How would AI react to a long-term boring existence? Maybe fun wouldn’t be necessary, but I for one wouldn’t want to live that way, lifeless, loveless, humorless, connected-less. 

Fifth, and finally, AI would need a form of consciousness to reflect on the world and its existence. This is our strength. We don’t yet know how consciousness is created in our own minds, so before we could program that into AI’s heart of hearts, we at least would need to understand it first. That alone might be an even bigger and more useful problem for us to work on than AI itself.

And, to extend this discussion, google Turing’s Imitation Game, not the movie, but the game where one tries to guess if we are talking to a machine or human.

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