Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Artificial Intelligence: has uprising started too early?

Artificial Intelligence: two words which may sound, to a few as a solution to all kind of problems, and to few others, a reason for human extinction.
Yes, we apparently are arriving at the juncture, where this debate is going to take the whole world  in a whirlwind. What churns out of this, will probably decide the fate of the human kind.
For those, who are unware, watch this video uploaded on youtube by Coldfusion, explaining, what exactly is artificial intelligence?

There have been many movies by now making use of this concept of artificial intelligence, which begins with having it as a boon to human life, but almost all of them ending up proving it to be a curse. After watching  a movie "Rise of the planet of the apes", I wrote a post where I compared those intelligent monkeys to be another threat other than artificial intelligence, for the human race. 
Back then, movies were the only reason we felt AI's to be threat. But it seems, with time, the imaginations are turning into reality.  While many big-wigs including Elon Musk, Stefan Hawking, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak have already hinted about the threat of AI taking over humans, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, hasn't been thinking in the same  lines as those.There have incidences of heavy arguments between Mark and Elon over the issue. And just when Elon made a comment that, Mark has no understanding of AI, very soon, news have now emerged that the two bots running on AI had to be shut down, because they stopped using the English language fed to them, and instead developed their own code language to interact with each other. As a part of training, apart from training in conversation through english language, these bots were also developed with negotiation skills. After initial conversations going properly in English language, over the time, they started developing their own language. In this, apparently attempt was made (by the bots) to put emphasis on something, making it appear very important, and then as a part of negotiation, loose this "apparently" important thing, to gain things of their interest.
 A part of their conversation is given in the news reported here:

The language to us may look English, but it has been modified by the bots as per their requirement.
The severity of this experiment was to this extent, that Facebook apparently shut down the two bots to stop the conversation between them:

I would call this a wake up call for all of us to understand where the world is going, and do we really need such things to emerge in near future. We can not run away from this. Few years, Facebook was used by only computer friendly people. But now, it is present in everyone's hand and making sure, you kill your time on it. Did you ask for it? No. But it still reached your doorsteps. Similarly, AI if emerged, will unknowingly enter your home. The concept of cloning, when emerged was proposed to have many prospects, but human cloning was back then barred, realizing possible threats, which come with it. AI too, would show, many prospective benefits, but there probably are more threats hidden behind those benefits. It may initially make us feel like master to begin, but unknowingly may end up make us its slave entirely and for eternity.

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