The world of AI
With the world consistently evolving and technology getting better, there is no exception when it comes to Artificial intelligence. As a person that looks in from the outside, that can be a scary thing to think about. Afterall, movies like I, Robot and Avengers: Age of Ultron. With those movies portraying a very real possibility of the dangers, some people still continue to develop and enhance the AI. Back in the 1950s, Alan Turning, who is considered to be one of the pioneers of Artificial intelligence, published the groundbreaking paper to introduce computerized thoughts.
The Beginning
In the AI world, the 1950s were the birth of Artificial intelligence. Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy described AI as “any task performed by a machine that would have previously been considered to require human intelligence.” A huge roadblock in the early stages were that computers were not capable to learn. Computers couldn’t store commands but only execute them. What that means is computers could only do as they were told and not remember what it did. Another huge roadblock was in the 1950s computers could cost up to $200,000 a month to just lease. Only wealthy universities and the few main tech companies could afford to use such expensive machines.
Groundbreaking moments in AI
Shortly after Alan Turning’s paper in 1956, Dartmouth held an AI conference. John McCarthy, a math professor at Dartmouth College was the first to refer to what we now know “artificial intelligence”. John led a group that would get the conference to be held and the world’s top science researchers were all at the event in the summer of 1956. Then, in 1957 a man named Frank Rosenblatt built the perception, the basic structure of a neural network. A perception is a series of inputs that report to a node that computes inputs and gives a classification. In the 1970s, AI experienced many troubles which led to the UK and US governments shutting down the funding. In 1987, AI became like a taboo, no one wanted anything to do with it and only a hand full of people had the desire to continue working on it. The 1970s-1980s were known as ‘Winter’.
AI today
As of March 2021, the machines haven’t taken over…yet! The world we live in has machines in our daily lives, they affect how we live, work and entertain. The voice powered personal assistants like Google home, Siri, Alexa or the self-driven vehicles, there are several examples of artificial intelligence in use today. After 70 years of development, the technology is still in its infancy. Elon Musk has said that AI can be the “biggest existential threat” of our times. Elon also believes there should be some type of agencies that look over and govern the use and development of AI. With no real rules AI development could really become a threat. Artificial Intelligence has the ability to learn human intelligence, that issue can be seen in the masses by human history. What I mean by that is the nature of humans can be overrun by greed, power and dishonesty. If AI were to learn these characteristics, we could see some serious problems like the movies portray.
Summary
I believe there is a place in the world for AI, there is good things it has brought to us. Unfortunately, there is people who want more out of it and with the rapid growth of machines and tech there could be problems down the line. With that being said, one day I do hope a neutral ground could be found and AI development could be governed and have some restrictions. What do you feel about AI? Are you concerned or worried? These are questions that are asked and as the people they should be addressed.