MadSci Network: Computer Science |
I assume you are interested in whether it will be possible to construct a machine with greater than human intelligence. In some ways, machines are already smarter. For example, a basic calculator can do math faster and more reliably than people. There are plenty of other examples where a computer can already surpass people at solving problems, making decisions, or carrying out other "thinking" tasks. In some cases, computers even seem more creative and adaptable than people. On the other hand, there are other aspects of human intelligence that seem to be very resistant to duplication on a computer. These are generally things that people find easy. For example, the most stubborn AI problem is "commonsense reasoning" -- i.e. getting a computer to know a wide variety of basic things and apply that knowledge effectively. For example, if you were to see a typed form with someone's age listed as 225, you'd probably assume that this is a typo and that their real age is 25. To do this, you use your commonsense knowledge about how long people live and what kind of typing mistakes they make. People are versatile in that they could think this through even if they'd never seen someone make that particular kind of error before. Giving a computer that kind of ability is crucial if it is to be considered generally intelligent (not a specialized intelligence like a calculator). So for now, no machine is generally intelligent and no such machine is likely to exist in the near future. The long term prospects for machine intelligence are another matter. Few people working in AI doubt that the commonsense reasoning problem will eventually be solved. The same goes for other problems.. getting machines to learn on their own, perceive the world around them quickly and effectively, control dextrous arms and hands, and several other tough research problems. If and when these problems are solved, it will become possible to build machines with superhuman ability. They will have the basic cognitive characteristics of a person, plus specialized extra-human abilities to do math, remember with perfect accuracy and so on. Of course, by this time, it will also be possible to fit people with prosthetics that enhance our abilities in exactly those ways.. e.g. a prosthetic memory with the capacity and stability of a good hard disk drive. So one guess is that computer and human intelligences will both grow, and will evetually converge.
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