My Spot

Science fiction movies have always been fascinated by the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In a typical science fiction film, AI robots tend to get carried away with their intelligence and ruin the world. But in the real world, is this likely to happen???

Fair enough, AI today is quite advanced. It is capable to beating the world's best chess player. But it really depends on how you define intelligence. The computer was able to win against the best chess player because they calculate at astronomically quick speed; they can determine 100 moves in advance, the possibilities that could occur and mathematically determine which move to take to maximise the chance of winning. In another words, their intelligence is actually pre-programmed.

When AI tries to solve the non-mathematical problems, they tend to become somewhat unreliable. AI have been developed to do things such as recognising attractiveness in women, determining the emotional state of a person and carrying out a sensible conversation with a human being. But even if they are 90% reliable, what benefits do these AIs serve? Fair enough, it is 'exciting' to see these AIs in action, but I can't see these AIs being put into any practical use.
AI will only be as intelligent as the programmer who built it. If there is something that the programmer was not aware of, the AI will not be aware of it either. Just think about how complicated the human brains are. On the day you were born, you know nothing about the world. Gradually, by using your senses (look, hear, smell etc), you begin to interact with the world and learn how the world works. The most amazing thing is you learn to speak. How did we manage to learn to speak without knowing the language in the first place??? Just pick up an Egyptian book and try to read it, or listen to an Egyptian speak and try and understand what they mean. Humans learn how to learn, and this will be the biggest obstacles when building AI. How do we put this into a computer program, to learn without knowing anything in the first place? I am reluctant to say this is impossble, because you can't prove that this is impossible. But I am confident that this will not be possible for many generations to come.