Reading 11:Master of Puppets

Artificial Intelligence is advanced Computer Processes that are often used to mimic or surpass normal human capabilities. To me artificial intelligence is anything that is supposed to stand in for a normal human. This means machines, such as Watson, which is meant to largely do the job of Doctor, such as researching medical data, cross searching information, or examining x-rays, would be considered Artificial Intelligence. While Artificial Intelligence may be able to surpass normal human capabilities in some situations, such as telling the difference between a bee and a three in large sets of data, they often are not very diverse in their abilities. At the current time, it is different form normal human intelligence because it lacks the breadth of understanding. In the example above, an Artificial Intelligence may be able to go through thousands of images much faster than a human determining with a similar failure percentage which is a bee and which is a three, it will not be able to understand what a four is. This is the advantage humans have at the present moment, the ability to have a more diverse understanding base. The projects Deep Blue, Watson, etc. all show that artificial intelligence is viable, but not in the way most would think of Artificial Intelligence. In the Economist article, current Artificial Intelligence is described as Cognitive Enhancements and I feel this is the best way to understand them. While Artificial Intelligence is able to improve throught by a certain amount, it is more a tool than a substitute. They will be able to help greatly, Watson will help doctors keep up to date on medical research and limit the chances of misdiagnosis, however, it will not be able to do this on its own at the current time. So, while not viable as independent intelligences, they are able to enhance current abilities and understanding and so are not gimmicks.

While the Turing test is a good first step of testing for Artificial Intelligence, as the Chinese Room points out, it is easily subverted. I think that while, it shows advancement in technology, it does not show true Artificial Intelligence, or strong AI as described in the Chinese Room. The idea that Intentionality is necessary makes sense from a logical point of view, however as more and more the amount of Artificial Intelligence programs written are created by Deep Learning programs, we will get closer and closer to true Artificial Intelligence. A lot of why the intentionality argument works, is that when data is taken in by the mind, the mind processes it in such a way that only it understands, this is the intentionality, it understand data as it intends to, not as a programmer told it to. For this reason, while I feel the Turing test is insufficient, I do believe that true Artificial Intelligence will be possible eventually.

As explained before I view current Artificial Intelligence as Cognitive Enhancement, similar to Computers even from the last century. For this reason I am not supremely concerned with the threat of Artificial Intelligence. I feel like if technology continues as it is, Artificial Intelligence will benefit us as a society much more than it will hurt us as a society.

I think it is very possible that a computing system could be considered a mind, the biological mind itself is, in my opinion, biological computers. Similar to how computers have circuits, brains have neurons, while the Brain is much more complex than modern computers, I feel at some point a computing system could have mindedness. Ethically I think this means that if a computer has mindedness it must be subject to the same restrictions as other conscious beings, such as it should not be allowed to hurt people. I feel like so long as mechanical computers are treated like biological computers there shouldn’t be any problems.