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Post any Unit 1 (Big Picture) essays you are willing to share below.
Feel free to include your name (and contact info if you want).
On the Future of Artificial Intelligence
By Aaron J. Otrin
One of the biggest questions of modern times is not whether or not we have the technology to create machines with artificial intelligence but what will happen when we do that. I believe that what will happen when machines can replicate human intelligence is that the machines will want civil rights and become mechanical humans. Once this happens there will be two approaches to get these civil rights, the peaceful robots and the aggressive robots. Kind of a Martin Luther King Jr. versus Malcom X kind of situation. The Age of Spiritual Machines is the only book that really adheres to this topic.
“...we will empathize with their professed feelings and struggles because their minds will be based on the design of human thinking.”1 Ray Kurzweil said this in his book ' Age of Spiritual Machines'. He proposes that humans will empathize with the 'feelings' that the machines profess to have. I think that may take some time as we often can't understand the feelings of those of of different race so how are we gonna act when they are just pretending to be human. The inability of us humans to sometimes empathize with each other is gonna make it harder for us to sympathize with these machines.
Ray Kurzweil says that “that a digital computer will be the world's chess champion within ten years.”2 I think that a computer may beat most of todays humans but I think that eventually a human will be able to beat that computer as the way of human thinking is too complex for anyone to program a machine to do. Even though the machines may profess to have feelings and emotions they won't be able to think strategically as well as we do and they won't be able to change the plane of thinking as quickly as we will. This will give us the advantage in warfare and will give the human nations the backbone to resist the machines threats and will support the aggressive robots cause even more.
Ray Kurzweil also said that “This last century has seen enormous technological change and the social upheavals that go along with it...”3 This social upheaval is what I believe will cause a robotic revolution in nations across the world. In each nation two sides will exist, the aggressive side and the peaceful side, but the one thing that will keep the human race alive and order intact is the fact that always after all these social upheavals there is always an end. The social disorder from each new technology eventually goes away and once again order is restored in the world and machines and humans will live together and without problems.
In conclusion our history predicts our future and history shows that the new technology of Artificial Human Intelligence will cause a social upheaval and a divide amongst the new machines but also the human ability to adapt and quickly change our ideals will eventually cause these problems to be solved and for humans and machines to coexist peacefully.
Citations:
1. P. 63 of The Age of Spiritual Machines.
2. From the Back Matter of the book
3. From the Front Matter of the book
Human Augmentation, Fact or Fiction: Can humans achieve the man-machine interface?
By Brooke Beresford
When most people think of Human augmentation, it is believed for the most part that this will never become a reality, or that it will go tragically wrong when finally implemented. Now what I am referring to is what is commonly called wetware, that being computerized parts placed into the human body. Let’s for example say a hard drive attached to the brain to allow storage of data and to be used at a later date. This concept seems so farfetched to people that many cannot even imagine it happening in the first place, other just don’t believe that humans will take that route, which I respect. But from my perspective it seems practically inevitable, the rate at which computers is being incorporated into our lives is staggering, having worked for several computer companies as tech support has shown me this, I cannot tell you how many times I have had a user call in, either in tears or yelling at me that their computer went down and now the "priceless" data on the machine must be recovered at what seems like any cost to them or the agent helping them. And of course the real answer is to back up your data. But this to me seems to be the crossroads of what I am speaking about. The fact that in just around twenty years or so the personal computer has become the focal point of many of our lives, each person depending on the computer in their own way, but dependant on it none the less. I see this only escalating as time goes on as computers become smaller, more reliable and more and more user friendly.
My first citation will be from Radical Evolution [1] this book is at its most basic form about future technology that already has a basis in the world today. In the first few pages of the book Garreau uses a great comparison to common pharmaceuticals as a form of human augmentation, in that we are ingesting a man made chemical to augment or change the way our body works in order to achieve a given result, in this case Viagra, to well…. You most likely already know what that does, but I bring up the reference to show that we are already doing these kinds of things, not in machine form but the concept is the same, and we have been doing these things for as long as we have existed, in one form or another. Now this leads me to believe that this trend will only continue as we progress and evolve as humans. Now you might say to me Brooke, this is ludicrous to compare medicine to machine augmentation, but to you I say it’s only the baby steps involved in the whole process. I believe that we will not discover this type of hardware out of desire but out of necessity, from the same book [1] there is a project that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. (DARPA for short) is funding that they call the telekinetic monkey, this project is not really telekinetic at all but a project wherein they are trying to build an interface for the monkey to be able to move machinery with its mind, they have already been successful in having the monkey move a joystick from left to right with nothing more than brain power, now the implementation is crude at best, having to drill a hole in the monkeys skull and implant what they called a hair ball of a chip and many wires hooked directly to the portions of the brain that would control arm movement, now of course th is is a far stretch to having a human machine interface but if in a world the idea of such is so farfetched then why do we have currently funded projects trying to do just that. The idea comes from one of the DARPA project leaders, his daughter has cerebral palsy, and movement is a real problem for her given this condition. Yet she is attending ASU as we speak. Another good example of how this can be achieved is [2] in the Wisconsin state journal, there was a front page article about a University of Wisconsin medical student that is proposing that electrodes placed directly on the brain, could feasibly in the future allow paralyzed and movement impaired people, the use of full prosthetics this could lead one to believe in the future we could control a whole robotic body with nothing but just our brain and spinal cord. This is very outlandish even today with as many forward thinking people as we do have, but I believe this is not only plausible but very possible and perhaps coming to us sooner than we think. The same technology is already trying to be used in daily computer use as you can see from this article [3]. Where they are trying to get the same kinds of technology to move a mouse, now this I feel came from the same concept but for consumers not the mobility impaired.
As you can see these are but just a few of the current technologies that exists today that could lead to potentially evolutionary changes in human life. And just as an example as to why I use the term evolution, is that lets say as a group scientist could have some kind of speed increase in thought response, let’s say that they could go into their own think tank so to speak where we could compute ideas as fast as a computer can add and subtract. This would take the time needed to do research down dramatically, as is devoting your life to one field of science can take your entire life and not only that you may not finish the research yourself, you may just lay the groundwork for the new generations of scientist to come. Now if we can think let’s just say one hundred times faster we could do that much more research in one life time. This could bring the discovery time for new inventions or theories down to nothing compared to the lifetime or more it can take now. Going even further lets add a network type interface to the brain now and scientist can collaborate from anywhere at anytime with anyone they choose to, this alone I think in the end would be worth pursing if not to better our self but to better the planet and perhaps one day the entire universe.
Perhaps I am just a dreamer but hearing many of the comments in class as to " oh that could never happen " is just plain bothersome, for I believe in some of the quantum physics theory in that the world in which we exist we create on a daily basis through thought and idea. So if nothing else I just want to open your eyes to the possibility.
[1]Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human by Joel Garreau
[2] http://www.cntp.wisc.edu/pdfs/WSJ_05Dec2004_williams.pdf
[3] http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3292.asp
Feel free to include your name (and contact info if you want).
On the Future of Artificial Intelligence
By Aaron J. Otrin
One of the biggest questions of modern times is not whether or not we have the technology to create machines with artificial intelligence but what will happen when we do that. I believe that what will happen when machines can replicate human intelligence is that the machines will want civil rights and become mechanical humans. Once this happens there will be two approaches to get these civil rights, the peaceful robots and the aggressive robots. Kind of a Martin Luther King Jr. versus Malcom X kind of situation. The Age of Spiritual Machines is the only book that really adheres to this topic.
“...we will empathize with their professed feelings and struggles because their minds will be based on the design of human thinking.”1 Ray Kurzweil said this in his book ' Age of Spiritual Machines'. He proposes that humans will empathize with the 'feelings' that the machines profess to have. I think that may take some time as we often can't understand the feelings of those of of different race so how are we gonna act when they are just pretending to be human. The inability of us humans to sometimes empathize with each other is gonna make it harder for us to sympathize with these machines.
Ray Kurzweil says that “that a digital computer will be the world's chess champion within ten years.”2 I think that a computer may beat most of todays humans but I think that eventually a human will be able to beat that computer as the way of human thinking is too complex for anyone to program a machine to do. Even though the machines may profess to have feelings and emotions they won't be able to think strategically as well as we do and they won't be able to change the plane of thinking as quickly as we will. This will give us the advantage in warfare and will give the human nations the backbone to resist the machines threats and will support the aggressive robots cause even more.
Ray Kurzweil also said that “This last century has seen enormous technological change and the social upheavals that go along with it...”3 This social upheaval is what I believe will cause a robotic revolution in nations across the world. In each nation two sides will exist, the aggressive side and the peaceful side, but the one thing that will keep the human race alive and order intact is the fact that always after all these social upheavals there is always an end. The social disorder from each new technology eventually goes away and once again order is restored in the world and machines and humans will live together and without problems.
In conclusion our history predicts our future and history shows that the new technology of Artificial Human Intelligence will cause a social upheaval and a divide amongst the new machines but also the human ability to adapt and quickly change our ideals will eventually cause these problems to be solved and for humans and machines to coexist peacefully.
Citations:
1. P. 63 of The Age of Spiritual Machines.
2. From the Back Matter of the book
3. From the Front Matter of the book
Human Augmentation, Fact or Fiction: Can humans achieve the man-machine interface?
By Brooke Beresford
When most people think of Human augmentation, it is believed for the most part that this will never become a reality, or that it will go tragically wrong when finally implemented. Now what I am referring to is what is commonly called wetware, that being computerized parts placed into the human body. Let’s for example say a hard drive attached to the brain to allow storage of data and to be used at a later date. This concept seems so farfetched to people that many cannot even imagine it happening in the first place, other just don’t believe that humans will take that route, which I respect. But from my perspective it seems practically inevitable, the rate at which computers is being incorporated into our lives is staggering, having worked for several computer companies as tech support has shown me this, I cannot tell you how many times I have had a user call in, either in tears or yelling at me that their computer went down and now the "priceless" data on the machine must be recovered at what seems like any cost to them or the agent helping them. And of course the real answer is to back up your data. But this to me seems to be the crossroads of what I am speaking about. The fact that in just around twenty years or so the personal computer has become the focal point of many of our lives, each person depending on the computer in their own way, but dependant on it none the less. I see this only escalating as time goes on as computers become smaller, more reliable and more and more user friendly.
My first citation will be from Radical Evolution [1] this book is at its most basic form about future technology that already has a basis in the world today. In the first few pages of the book Garreau uses a great comparison to common pharmaceuticals as a form of human augmentation, in that we are ingesting a man made chemical to augment or change the way our body works in order to achieve a given result, in this case Viagra, to well…. You most likely already know what that does, but I bring up the reference to show that we are already doing these kinds of things, not in machine form but the concept is the same, and we have been doing these things for as long as we have existed, in one form or another. Now this leads me to believe that this trend will only continue as we progress and evolve as humans. Now you might say to me Brooke, this is ludicrous to compare medicine to machine augmentation, but to you I say it’s only the baby steps involved in the whole process. I believe that we will not discover this type of hardware out of desire but out of necessity, from the same book [1] there is a project that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. (DARPA for short) is funding that they call the telekinetic monkey, this project is not really telekinetic at all but a project wherein they are trying to build an interface for the monkey to be able to move machinery with its mind, they have already been successful in having the monkey move a joystick from left to right with nothing more than brain power, now the implementation is crude at best, having to drill a hole in the monkeys skull and implant what they called a hair ball of a chip and many wires hooked directly to the portions of the brain that would control arm movement, now of course th is is a far stretch to having a human machine interface but if in a world the idea of such is so farfetched then why do we have currently funded projects trying to do just that. The idea comes from one of the DARPA project leaders, his daughter has cerebral palsy, and movement is a real problem for her given this condition. Yet she is attending ASU as we speak. Another good example of how this can be achieved is [2] in the Wisconsin state journal, there was a front page article about a University of Wisconsin medical student that is proposing that electrodes placed directly on the brain, could feasibly in the future allow paralyzed and movement impaired people, the use of full prosthetics this could lead one to believe in the future we could control a whole robotic body with nothing but just our brain and spinal cord. This is very outlandish even today with as many forward thinking people as we do have, but I believe this is not only plausible but very possible and perhaps coming to us sooner than we think. The same technology is already trying to be used in daily computer use as you can see from this article [3]. Where they are trying to get the same kinds of technology to move a mouse, now this I feel came from the same concept but for consumers not the mobility impaired.
As you can see these are but just a few of the current technologies that exists today that could lead to potentially evolutionary changes in human life. And just as an example as to why I use the term evolution, is that lets say as a group scientist could have some kind of speed increase in thought response, let’s say that they could go into their own think tank so to speak where we could compute ideas as fast as a computer can add and subtract. This would take the time needed to do research down dramatically, as is devoting your life to one field of science can take your entire life and not only that you may not finish the research yourself, you may just lay the groundwork for the new generations of scientist to come. Now if we can think let’s just say one hundred times faster we could do that much more research in one life time. This could bring the discovery time for new inventions or theories down to nothing compared to the lifetime or more it can take now. Going even further lets add a network type interface to the brain now and scientist can collaborate from anywhere at anytime with anyone they choose to, this alone I think in the end would be worth pursing if not to better our self but to better the planet and perhaps one day the entire universe.
Perhaps I am just a dreamer but hearing many of the comments in class as to " oh that could never happen " is just plain bothersome, for I believe in some of the quantum physics theory in that the world in which we exist we create on a daily basis through thought and idea. So if nothing else I just want to open your eyes to the possibility.
[1]Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human by Joel Garreau
[2] http://www.cntp.wisc.edu/pdfs/WSJ_05Dec2004_williams.pdf
[3] http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3292.asp
