Emerging Technologies

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it. Major AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents," where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximize its chances of success. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956, defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines."

Among the traits that researchers hope machines will exhibit are reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, communication, perception and the ability to move and manipulate objects. General intelligence (or "strong AI") has not yet been achieved and is a long-term goal of some AI research.

AI research uses tools and insights from many fields, including computer science, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, ontology, operations research, economics, control theory, probability, optimization and logic. AI research also overlaps with tasks such as robotics, control systems, scheduling, data mining, logistics, speech recognition, facial recognition and many others.

Other names for the field have been proposed, such as computational intelligence, synthetic intelligence, intelligent systems, or computational rationality. These alternative names are sometimes used to set oneself apart from the part of AI dealing with symbols (considered outdated by many, see GOFAI) which is often associated with the term “AI” itself.

AI in Myth, Fiction and Speculation

Thinking machines and artificial beings appear in Greek myths, such as Talos of Crete, the golden robots of Hephaestus and Pygmalion's Galatea.Human likenesses believed to have intelligence were built in every civilization, beginning with the sacred statues worshipped in Egypt and Greece, and including the machines of Yan Shi,Hero of Alexandria,Al-Jazarior Wolfgang von Kempelen.It was widely believed that artificial beings had been created by Geber,Judah Loewand Paracelsus.Stories of these creatures and their fates discuss many of the same hopes, fears and ethical concerns that are presented by artificial intelligence.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,inspired in part by the legend of Paracelsus, considers a key issue in the ethics of artificial intelligence: if a machine can be created that has intelligence, could it also feel? If it can feel, does it have the same rights as a human being? The idea also appears in modern science fiction: the film Artificial Intelligence: A.I. considers a machine in the form of a small boy which has been given the ability to feel human emotions, including, tragically, the capacity to suffer. This issue, now known as "robot rights", is also being considered by futurists, such as California's Institute for the Future,although many critics believe that the discussion is premature.

Another issue explored by both science fiction writers and futurists is the impact of artificial intelligence on society. In fiction, AI has appeared as a servant (R2D2 in Star Wars), a comrade (Lt. Commander Data in Star Trek), an extension to human abilities (Ghost in the Shell), a conqueror (The Matrix), a dictator (With Folded Hands), an exterminator (Terminator, Battlestar Galactica) and a race (Asurans in "Stargate Atlantis"). Academic sources have considered such consequences as: a decreased demand for human labor;the enhancement of human ability or experience; and a need for redefinition of human identity and basic values.

Several futurists argue that artificial intelligence will transcend the limits of progress and fundamentally transform humanity. Ray Kurzweil has used Moore's law (which describes the relentless exponential improvement in digital technology with uncanny accuracy) to calculate that desktop computers will have the same processing power as human brains by the year 2029, and that by 2045 artificial intelligence will reach a point where it is able to improve itself at a rate that far exceeds anything conceivable in the past, a scenario that science fiction writer Vernor Vinge named the "technological singularity". Edward Fredkin argues that "artificial intelligence is the next stage in evolution,"an idea first proposed by Samuel Butler's Darwin Among the Machines (1863), and expanded upon by George Dyson in his book of the same name in 1998. Several futurists and science fiction writers have predicted that human beings and machines will merge in the future into cyborgs that are more capable and powerful than either. This idea, called transhumanism, which has roots in Aldous Huxley and Robert Ettinger, is now associated with robot designer Hans Moravec, cyberneticist Kevin Warwick and inventor Ray Kurzweil. Transhumanism has been illustrated in fiction as well, for example on the manga Ghost in the Shell. Pamela McCorduck believes that these scenarios are expressions of an ancient human desire to, as she calls it, "forge the gods."