Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Since the brain is a complex adaptive system and we can simulate a complex adaptive system in a computer, it is only logical that we try to use computers to undertake tasks in similar ways top the brain and create machines that can actually think for themselves.


In 1950 Alan Turing devised a test for whether an AI system is intelligent. He asks the question of whether a human person communicating with a machine could be fooled into thinking they were communicating with another person.

He also created the Turing Machine back in 1936, which was a hypothetical machine operating an extremely basic abstract symbol-manipulating devices. It  created a mental framework from which to think how artificial intelligence might be developed and in fact, the Turing machine was an influence in how the computers we now use are structured.

In 1997 Gary Kasparov, the world champion chess player was defeated by a computer built by IBM called "Big Blue" in 1997. 

Voice recognition software is different from most software in that it has the ability to learn. The more you use the program, the more accurately the program can recognise your voice and turn it into text.

Google also uses "machines" that can learn to return the web page that most nearly meets the page you were searching for. Each time it is used it is gathering information designed to make it more efficient at searching.

Within the next ten years we will see computers with the same level of complexity as humans. That does not mean they will be able to undertake the same functions as a person.

Complex adaptive systems have the ability to learn. They are formed  when autonomous agents interact capable of making their own decisions interact with  their environment and other agents. It must take in information from the environment, assess it and choose an action which is appropriate and effective in its environment. Very often we look at the systems nature has evolved for clues as to the most efficient way to structure an artificially intelligent machine.

A moment's thought will make it clear just how complex we are and how so many of the tasks we take for granted are actually exceedingly complex and replicating such functions is a far more difficult task than we might imagine.

A simple thing like looking at a scene and interpreting what is being seen is nowhere near as straight forward as it seems. How would a machine determine where are the edges of each object is? How would it know which objects are joined to one another and which ones just happen to be lying next to each other. How does it know that two objects are the same when one is turned to a different orientation, much closer or further away, tilted on angle, or in different levels of illumination? How different do two objects have to be before it is obvious that they are not just two different examples of the same thing.  there are enormous challenges before us if we are to replicate the functions of a human being in a machine of some type.

Marvin Minsky, who has done an enormous amount of work in the area believes that in principle, machines will be able to do anything a human mind can do.

When we consider all these factors, we must also ponder what it means to be human. Are we just extremely complex machines we will one day create in a computer or are we uniquely different beings.

Science fiction stories abound of robots going out of control and taking over humans. the reality we are seeing is more of a blurring between the boundaries of what is human and what is machine. Machines are being integrated into biological forms. For example artificial arms can be given to a person who has lost an arm that they control directly from their brain. Biological components are being added to machines. We are directly altering genetic codes and on the brink of creating new non-DNA based life forms. There are enormous philosophical implications of the work being done in the field of artificial intelligence. the field is growing so fast that we struggle to come to terms with the implications of the new technologies becoming available to us.