Sustained Society

Are we really Intelligent ?

Human beings are very interesting. Most of them are self-obsessed. They think they are very intelligent. However, if you ask them compare to what? They might not have any answer for some time. Then after thinking they will reply compared to all other life form on earth! Oh Wow, as if world is full of intelligent species. Truth is not so pleasant. Truth is we are emotional fools. Have you ever cried while watching movies? Have you ever started jumping and yelling when your team wins in a match and you are watching it on TV? How about breaking TV and throwing things when your team lost a match? When it comes to personal safety we do some really cool stuff. As soon as we notice there are no policemen to watch us around, we remove safety belt of our car seat. We actually need laws to make people wear helmet while driving bikes! In construction sites, companies hire safety officers to ensure that workers are wearing safety harness because workers do not feel any danger while working on height. They are more interesting to show their bravery! One last example is of death of any loved one. For few days we keep weeping, crying and remain sad as if by doing so dead person will come back. We know for sure, he will not come back but our emotions make us do what we do. All the above behaviour does not qualify as an intelligent reaction to our situation.


Still we believe firmly that we are an intelligent species! We feel we are intelligent but actually it is just a wishful thinking. Since we do not have any competitor we believe we are intelligent. As AI advances, machines start beating us in games. If we will not come out of our wonderland and keep improving machines to do our work, soon we will create our own masters.

It is important to realize that we are not at apex of intelligence. We are just a little more intelligent than other animals. There are vast areas of improvement in our intelligence especially emotional control. Collectively, if we ever succeed in making a machine just a notch higher in intelligence than humans, that day will be the beginning of our end. We can’t imagine and think what they can do and how such super artificial intelligence (SAI) will interact with society! Any machine smarter than us can easily find a way to beat us.

In 1997, Deep Blue — the computer created by IBM — defeated World Chess Champion, Garry Kasparov. Alpha Go defeated the human champion of Chinese game “GO”, which is several times difficult than Chess.

Google Deep mind- the maker of Alpha Go, are pioneer in machine learning using neural network. Their speciality is that while other programs focus on just one area and excels in it, Deep mind is trying to create AI program capable for general purpose. Their progress so far is impressive and if they continue to develop their programs, soon we will have human level AI. It will not take more than a decade to surpass human and make a SAI.

SAI will be more dangerous than a nuclear bomb. We can never able to predict how SAI will behave.  SpaceX/Tesla CEO Elon Musk calls super intelligence “our greatest existential threat” and donated $10 million from his personal fortune to study the danger. However, if we will be able to control it, it will be biggest invention of human civilization. SAI will solve many difficult problems we are facing in every walk of our life. This will start a new era in human civilization.


Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (PART-1: Introduction)


As we usher in new century, we entered a new world-a world of artificial intelligence. Though people were working on AI from last 50 years or so but only now we are able to see practical application and fast development in this area. AI is the simulation of intelligent behaviour in computers using programming. That means AI imitates human intelligence without emotional interference. Since the programming is based on lot of research data AI can perform better than human. AI machines beaten human in games like chess and Go. Silently they are entering our daily life. If you use iPhone you must be familiar with siri- an AI application.

Artificial Intelligence is still in developing stage. Yet many Peoples find it dangerous for human kind. Their intuitions might be right. There are two ways AI research can proceed in future. One is called slow takeoff and other is fast takeoff. A slow takeoff is a situation in which AI goes from sub-human to human to superhuman intelligence very gradually. We will have enough time to study dangers associated with it and to remove those dangers. But in fast take off in few years we will develop super artificial intelligence and that will not give us enough time to study, understand and restrict dangers associated with it. We can not predict behaviour of anything which is more intelligent than us. Presently all data suggest medium to fast takeoff because all big companies and developed countries are spending billions of dollars on it. Within ten years we might reached  singularity a term used for AI reaching human brain power.

Machine learning is another major part of AI. Learning without any kind of supervision requires an ability to identify patterns in streams of inputs. It is much more like how a baby learns to interact with world. I find it more powerful than AI based on programming every known thing. Because in that case you cannot expect more than what you input and intelligence of machine is dependent on programmer intelligence. If programmer is not careful enough, machine will make mistake. But in machine learning, based on sensors machine learn itself from its surrounding. It gives machine ability to learn from data without programming it explicitly. This process is slow but has more potential in long-term. We might be able to make a machine which can answer some of the ultimate questions which we can’t answer because of our limited capabilities.  Google Deep mind uses reinforcement learning and thus it can improve itself. Alpha Go made by Google deep mind division already beat human in Chinese game of Go which is much difficult than chess.

to be continued in Part-II

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