Artificial intelligence is here.  Do you think we will be gone tomorrow? | Eastern NC Now

By:   Bill Lee

Jeffrey Hinton, the father of artificial intelligence, said on Sixty Minutes, and I paraphrase, he has some fear things might get out of hand.  He cannot believe we are safe from a brighter intelligence than we are.  Mr. Hinton claims the way he designed the system would allow the computer to learn for itself.  Gathering huge amounts of knowledge and it will become so convincing when interacting with humans, that we could be manipulated.  I guess the question on everybody’s mind is what is AI? 

My understanding is they use stacking of memory, and the computer uses pathways to carry out a task.  Once the computer is given a task it learns through trial and error and once it has learned a pathway which is successful, it then goes down to all the other memory blocks and tells them this is the quickest pathway to get this task done.  Whatever goal it might be, A.I. can come up with the best way to do the task.  What is troubling me?  Albert Einstein quote, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  Artificial intelligence has removed insanity.  Not to insult humans, but I believe that would put humans at a disadvantage.  

Hinton claims we will not understand artificial intelligence any more than we understand another human being’s brain or what they are thinking so for all practical purposes the artificial intelligence becomes a mystery as to what artificial intelligence’s intentions are.  And what is even more troubling is the fact Mr. Hinton believes A.I. can start writing its own code and modify itself.  For the layman that means it starts making up its own rules just like a human being will.  But Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple Computer’s, does not believe these things, he believes a computer can only do one task at a time and cannot reason.  Mr. Wozniak is a very smart man, I’m not.  My poor dog Kiley Stardust passed away a few years ago and my friends would always say, “It is truly sad when the dog is smarter than the owner.”