Artificial Intelligence
| Much as been made lately of the hype currently surrounding artificial intelligence. Does the current state of the field warrant such a reaction? |
A rtficial intelligence research is making great strides. Once again, the promise of the technology has been reflected in popular media, from the new movie Her, and the upcoming Transcendence to television programs like Intelligence and Almost Human. The impressiveness of voice-recognition systems like Siri and Google Now are getting us closer to full Turing-capable machine conversations.
Despite progress, critics do point out that we are nowhere close to human-levels in terms of general intelligence metrics.
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"Forget artificial intelligence – in the brave new world of big data, it's artificial idiocy we should be looking out for."
Also, Tom Chatfiled, writing for the Guardian recently critiqued how machine learning systems working with Big Data sets have not been very effective so far at image recognition. He cites Google's work last summer in identifying cats from YouTube videos.
According to Chatfield, "the banality of phrases like "big data" tends to conceal a semantic switcheroo, in which the results a system generates are considered an impartial representation of the world – or worse, an appealingly predictable substitute for mere actuality."
"A certain over-confident combination of man and machine can elsewhere take inaccuracy to a whole new level," he writes.
What Chatfield does not acknowledge is that artificial intelligence, and the sub-developments that make it up are exponential in nature. The developments we are seeing now, are bound to be dismissed and highly erroneous or very discrete operations. Common sense does elude our machines, just as a thorough understanding of it eludes us.
With continued and accelerated research and investment into neuroscience, psychology and machine learning, our artificial intelligence systems will continue to evolve and progress. Where exactly we are on the curve towards human-level AI will not be known until we can look back at the historical development of it alongside a functioning intelligent system.
Overall, Marcus is right. It is "useful to remember a basic truth: the human brain is the most complicated organ in the known universe, and we still have almost no idea how it works. Who said that copying its awesome power was going to be easy?"
So does the present state of the field warrant the hype?
With the promise and peril of artificial general intelligence for every person on earth, it certainly does.
SOURCE Top Image - Iowa State University
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