TWC Week 10 (Session 9)

This week's session was on emerging and future technologies. With technology advancing at such a fast pace, what could not be possible today, could become a reality in a blink of an eye. New technology also has the power to create new market demand as we have seen in the case of Apple's ipod when it was first launched.

Some interesting observations I made were with regards to the wide range of new technologies emerging. While the traditional idea of technological advancement was to make things bigger and faster, the concept of nanotechnology and fuel cell technology proves that going the opposite direction and making things smaller and more compact can be a technological advancement as well. With nanotechnology in the surgical field reducing the recovery time for patients as well as fuel cells becoming smaller and being able to hold more power, smaller can also be the way for technology to progress.

A key take away point from the lecture would be that we are indeed only bound by our imagination. Centuries ago, mankind thought that flight would be impossible but today, taking a flight is a very common mode of transportation. Another key point would be to keep challenging and questioning the existing norms, as that would be how progress is made.

An issue for further discussion would be where would all this lead us? The possibilities for misuse of such new technologies are as many as how it can benefit us.

My personal rating would be 8/10.

TWC Week 9 (Session 8)

TWC Week 9 (Session 8)

Brief Overview/Summary of the themes/topics addressed during the session

•   Interesting Observations and Ideas (ideas and concepts that captured your attention)

•   Key Take Away Points (the 2 or 3 key messages from the session that you intend to keep in mind going forward)

•   Issues for Further Discussion (stuff you wish had been considered or given more air-time in class – and why)

•   Personal Ratings for Session (how you would rate the session on a scale of 0 to 10. Feel free to be as subjective as you like in your assessment)

This week's lecture further emphasized the urgent need to solve our energy issue as rising energy consumption is increasingly becoming unsustainable. Will non-renewable fossil fuels forming the bulk of our energy sources, it will not be long before we run out of them. An interesting observation to note would be the heavy reliance on fossil fuels in developing countries, while developed countries are slowly making the switch. With clean energy technology in its infancy, it definitely comes with a high cost. With developing countries being unable to afford the switch to it, would the clean energy revolution drive a greater divide between the richer and poor nations?

A key takeaway point to note was that renewable energy sources like solar power as well as wind energy are largely under-utilized. As such, the trends show that increased investment in clean energy could lead to a solution for our energy concerns. The only issue is why countries seem to be slow to adopt it. The lack of awareness and the uncertainty of a clean energy market seems to be one of the major reasons banks are unwilling to finance such projects. With increasing calls for a switch to renewable energy sources as well as our energy crisis becoming more apparent, there's hope that things will change in the near future.

Another point would be the potential of the clean energy market. A graph in the lecture slides showing the investments and corresponding growths by different countries in the clean energy market shows large profits can be made from this new developing market sector. As such, we can expect to see technological advancements with regard to clean energy.

An issue for further discussion would be for the poorer developing countries, would a switch to more expensive clean energy be worth the investment currently, rather than on developing infrastructure and other areas of the economy instead?

Ratings: 8/10

 

TWC Paper Draft

Artificial Intelligence

Executive Summary


With the recent rapid development in artificial intelligence, future implications and ethical concerns are being raised and definite guidelines have to be drawn to prevent such technology from moving out of our control.
This paper firstly documents the dawn of artificial intelligence and shows how far it has developed till today. It next examines the current situation and level of artificial intelligence as well as their impact on the world now. Finally, it focuses on the more important future considerations and their enormous influence on the future especially if these serious implications and dangers are not addressed early. 

Introduction

Artificial intelligence is a wide field with different definitions but all of which involve the science of creating machines with intelligent behaviour. The general basis of artificial intelligence is the assumption that the human brain’s thoughts and activity can be explained and replicated in mechanical terms and reasoning. A normal human brain is estimated to have around 100 billion nerve cells. However it is the neural connections between these cells known as synapses which enable our brain to think and function, and they number over several hundreds of trillions. (Fry, 2011) As such, this places the power of the human brain far beyond the reach of any supercomputer in existence today, with the limits of the human memory still unchartered. Mankind has crossed numerous new frontiers in endless fields, creating wonderful feats of technology and engineering, as well as exploring the boundaries of outer space. However, we ourselves still have not managed to fully understand something much closer to us, the human brain. As we will see, mankind has been attempting to explain and replicate the human brain function mechanically throughout the ages. While it can be say that while we are still ultimately unsuccessful, the development of artificial intelligence has brought about positive changes to our lives in terms of convenience, efficiency, minimising safety risks and errors as well as endless other benefits..

This paper seeks to document the rise of artificial intelligence firstly before moving on to the current situation and future considerations. Through detailed examining of the current state of artificial intelligence, clues and signs can be gathered about the direction of where artificial intelligence would be heading towards. It is evident from the current situations, some of the potential hazards and implications we could be facing in the future. The numerous concerns about where we could be in the future with regards to artificial intelligence are clearly not unfounded and will be analysed to seek out potential solutions to solve them.

With regards to limitations, the key factor would be the lack of any real world examples to substantiate the future complications as the possibility of those scenarios or implications happening would be decades away in the future at least. Another issue would be the need for endless assumptions and specialized expertise in artificial intelligence to draw up precise and exact solutions to answer the problems faced in future considerations. As such, the author’s thoughts and analysis will be made from studying of the current situation as well as from the theories of other researchers in this field.

Historical Perspective

We will never know for sure where the idea of artificial intelligence originated from. Stories of intelligent robots are abound in historical myths of different cultures, ranging from the golden robots of Hephaestus in Ancient Greece, to Yan Zi’s automaton in Ancient China. (Grachev,Trans, 2006) But what we do know for sure is that in the 1950s, several milestone events which led to the birth of artificial intelligence as we know it today occurred. Alan Turing’s published paper on the possibilities of machines as intelligent as us, together with artificial intelligence research being accepted as an academic discipline led to the Dartmouth Conference in 1956. Many leading researchers in various fields were gathered and set the guidelines and foundation for the development of artificial intelligence for many decades to come. (Stewart, n.d.) This also sparked government interest over the next two decades which led to extensive funding in artificial intelligence research. As such, artificial intelligence developed at a rapid pace with many programs and algorithms developed to solve problems as well as replicate isolated areas of human thinking.
However in the 1970s, government reports were showing that the results of artificial research were not living up to the great expectations promised and as such, led to a heavy cut in government funding. This led to a period of time known as the “AI winter”. It also exposed the lack of genuine understanding and underestimation in how artificial intelligence works. (Smith, McGuire, Huang, Yang, 2006) Overall, progress in artificial intelligence was heavily affected and did not recover until the 1990s.
Fast forward to today, it is impossible for one to ignore the huge leaps in technological advancement with regards to artificial intelligence. While we are still nowhere near creating anything that can fully replicate a human brain, robots have been created that have some form of autonomous function. We are also rapidly entering a new frontier littered with many potential problems and concerns which will be examined in this paper.

Current Situation

The level of artificial intelligence today is a far cry from that of in the 1960s-70s. No longer are machines limited to mathematical functions and the like. Artificial intelligence has now become more widely common in our everyday lives and have become increasingly autonomous functions. Various machines and robots have also been created to exceed the level of the human brain in limited areas.

An example of such machines would be in the game of chess. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the idea of a computer beating one of the world’s best chess players was seemingly unthinkable. That all changed when IBM destroyed that notion in May 1997, with an improved version of its original Deep Blue, beating arguably the greatest player in the history of chess, Gary Kasparov in a 6 game match. (“Deep Blue”,n.d.) Today’s chess programs have evolved from the complex hardware Deep Blue had, which required it to evaluate every single move possible at each point in time, into chess software, resulting in much more efficient processing and thinking. The strongest chess engine in existence today, Houdini has an inbuilt ‘instinct’ which allows it to select only potentially good moves for further examining, while merely glancing over weaker moves, making it much more efficient and faster than previous programs. (Chessbase, 2012) Such an ability has been only previously been capable of by human players, and for a computer program to possess such a skill represents a huge step up for the level of artificial intelligence. This also opens more possibilities as to how artificial intelligence could grow from here with evidence that instinct can be programmed in as well. It may soon become a question not of how, but when would robots become human-like in thought.

Today’s increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence can be seen in the example of Google’s driverless cars. Extensive testing has shown the driverless car to be accident free at over 500 000km. (Guizzo, 2011) One may argue that such technology is not new as aeroplanes currently have an autopilot feature where the plane can be flown automatically with minimal interference from the pilot. However the autopilot in aeroplanes todayis merely to help the pilot perform his tasks, rather than take over his responsibility. It is also incapable of more complex tasks like taking off and landing. What makes the driverless car amazing is the environment of which the autonomous machine is operating in. The different sensors of the car working seamlessly together without any human interference to drive the car along crowded streets and highways, successfully avoiding walking pedestrians and moving cars is definitely a major engineering feat. Such a car is still far from being commercially available, with many liability and legal issues still being unanswered. To the author, such a level of autonomy in artificial intelligence today demonstrates that complex machines and mechanisms can be programmed to be autonomous despite being in a challenging and ever changing environment. Once again, such an event further shows the magnitude of possibilities for artificial intelligence in the future.

Artificial intelligence also plays an increasingly important role today as seen in the military. Armies around the world are constantly seeking new ways to reduce the risk of soldiers being killed in battle and have turned to artificial intelligence for alternative ways of warfare. An example would be the Samsung machine gun robot developed in South Korea. Developed for use along the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, the robot is capable of performing sentry duties, with its sensors being able to detect human movements and challenge intruders through audio or video communications. Though the robot would still be under the control of a human, it does have an automatic mode where it can make the decision to fire at an intruder when he is unable to provide an access code. (Global Security.org, 2011) Today, the possibilities of Lethal Autonomous Robots are being extensively researched into, with ideas of a robot having full decision of who to kill without any human interference being developed. The technology for such a machine does exist currently, as seen in the increasingly autonomous drones being manufactured. Although there is an element of human control for all autonomous robots currently, with the current situation, the possibility of a fully autonomous killing robot being developed in the near future is highly likely. (Pilkington, 2013) Such technological advancements not only have the potential to change the mode and tactics of warfare forever, but it also has the ability to limit the loss of human lives by reducing the need for actual human soldiers. The author notes that while the benefits of such robots are enormous, the potential risks like such autonomous robots operating out of our control cannot be ignored, and will be discussed later under future considerations.

Artificial intelligence has also been developed to a point where it can replicate human emotions and feelings to a limited degree. In the past, films like Blade Runner could only portray our speculations about the possibilities of robots with human-like emotions. However, in 2010, the first robot that could develop emotions and form bonds with humans was unveiled, being modelled on the attachment process that chimpanzee infants and human babies have. (BBC, 2010) Another important milestone would be the development of robots that could evolve and learn the ability to lie in controlled experiments. (Christensen, 2009) With an increased understanding of artificial intelligence, humans have begun to make progress in replicating basic human emotions and feelings as well as moving on to more complex ones. Though the range of emotions and feelings portrayed are still very limited as compared to those of a human, such progress is definitely fascinating as it leaves us to wonder if robots in the future can one day be ‘human-like’. The possibilities are endless but so are the future implications and dangers, which will be discussed next. 

Future Considerations

With artificial intelligence developing at a rapid pace, we are moving into a new age faced with many ethical concerns and dangers. Disastrous scenarios have been portrayed in many movies like The Terminator series as well as I, Robot. Many scientists and researchers have also warned about the potential implications and dangers of a developed artificial intelligence.

The first issue of which would be the danger of a technological singularity, a scenario when artificial intelligence would have evolved past the point of human intelligence to dominate human civilization and human nature itself. Numerous artificial intelligence researchers have argued that there is no motivation as well as being mathematically impossible for a highly developed artificial intelligence to maintain any ‘friendliness’ with the human race, which as such, places them as a potential threat to mankind. (Keiper, A., A.N. Schulman, 2011) While the possibility of such advanced robots dominating the human race seems ages away, the seeds of such technology have already been planted as shown in the earlier examples of increasingly autonomous robots in the military. Different proposals to prevent such a disaster from occurring exist. One side of the argument emphasises the need to base all future artificial intelligence developmental goals on a friendly relationship with humans, so as to ensure that the machines will never turn on us. However the level of engineering and coding to install such a behavioural pattern is beyond the limits of technology today and even anywhere in the near future, which makes it an unviable option at the moment. Less pessimistic proposals include the extreme view which concludes that the level of artificial intelligence today is sufficient, and trying to improve it will lead us on an inevitable road to a technological singularity. (Goertzel, 2011) With such proposals looking seemingly unfeasible at the moment, it would be best to take a more neutral approach, with development to continue as it is now, and having us humans keeping a close watch on progress to reduce the chances of such a singularity occurring. A good example would be the United Nations calling for a halt on further research and development of lethal autonomous robots until an international guidelines on their use can be decided upon. (Bloomfield, 2013)

Another key issue would be with regards to the liability of the robot. Artificial intelligence has been developed to such a stage today where robots are increasingly responsible for doing the jobs of humans as seen in the commercial sectors, leading the question of who is to be responsible for any breaches of the law committed by them. With such increasing responsibility, it is highly likely that a robot would be placed in charge of a life and death situation in the future. For such difficult questions, once again, a wide variety of opinions do exist. While there are calls for detailed logs for autonomous system to explain the robot’s reasoning, such features will no doubt place a limit on the level of the decision making systems. (The Economist, 2012) Applying ethical systems to such artificial intelligence seems to be the best way forward, but with the sheer difficulty of transferring such guidelines into programming systems, it stands to say that such programming would not exist anytime soon. Overall, such technological developments are definitely without question, for the better of mankind, but it would be necessary to answer such critical questions and set strict rules and guidelines in place before embarking on more ambitious projects, to spare us the mind boggling problems in the future.

One path of artificial intelligence progress that is being currently explored is the goal of not only creating a highly intelligent machine through replicating the human thought process but also, to develop a robot with a consciousness that would be virtually indistinguishable from that of a human. With such a robot in existence, we would be inclined to treat it as a fellow human being, bringing in questions of the rights they should be accorded, that of a human or of a machine that we can shut down at any time. Currently when individuals are being arrested for damages to machines or robots, it’s the rights of people that are being protected, not the machines. With the existence of such human-like robots in the future, the lines between man and machine will be blurred. With the case of civil rights, if they are accorded to such robots in the future, it stands to mean that they would be held responsible for any errors or laws broken committed by them, opening another huge can of worms with endless issues like those of the differences between software and hardware. (Freitas, R.A., Jr., 1985)

To the author, these major issues have to be answered before technology spirals out of our control. The issue of artificial intelligence is similar to that of a fire, in that in can help us keep warm and on the other hand, consume our houses in an instant if we are not careful. As such, the author ultimately feels that the element of human control should always be present in artificial intelligence as a safety feature, hence keeping machines and robots always under our command. This not only enforces the point of which artificial intelligence was created in the first place, which was to help and serve our needs, but shuts down the possibilities of a technological singularity where machines ultimately dominate us. The element of human control as a safety switch also closes the door on questions of whether robots should deserve equal civil rights. With the case of autonomous robots, it is the author’s view that they should be kept to the commercial sectors rather than in high risk situations involving life and death, given the extreme difficulty of installing ethical systems in robots at the moment. 

Conclusion

We indeed have come a long way from ancient history till today. What used to be myths and stories that people dreamed about have begun to set foot in reality. The dawn of a new age started in the 1950s with extensive collaboration between many researches of various fields on the theories and guidelines of artificial intelligence, and was propelled by extensive government funding. Although the development of artificial intelligence hit a major tumbling block in the 1970s, it managed to pick up momentum once again in the 1990s at a rapid pace. Machines with capabilities once thought of as impossible were being unveiled and mankind’s ambition sought to ensure even greater feats of engineering would occur. Such events would definitely announce the start of a revolutionary new age and greatly shape our ways of life.

However, the current situation poses enough clues about the potential implications of what could happen if we do not have a tight rein over our technological progress. While the future considerations raised earlier may not happen in the near future, it is indeed a possibility in the decades to come. The main concerns stem from the idea of robots one day operating beyond our control as well as having an equal or even high intelligence than the creators, humans ourselves. While proposals for ethical systems and guidelines to be built into artificial programming codes seem like the best solution, such engineering and technology simple does not exist currently. As such, the idea of always having a human in overall control as a failsafe seems the most practical to the author. Such a system does have its cons as it limits the setting up of an artificial neural network as well as the prevention of example-based learning systems which are far more advanced than current programming systems for the robots. However the elephant in the room cannot be ignored, and hence it is the author’s view that such measures have to be implemented until technological advancements have found a way to program such ethical guidelines into programming code.

Overall, artificial intelligence in the future does have the endless potential to change our lives dramatically for the better. While there may be many concerns and potential problems to face, it is the author’s view that as long as we address them early and adequately, we would be able to harness the full benefits without creating unnecessary problems for ourselves.

References

BBC (2010 August 10). Nao the first robot with 'emotions' unveiled. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/threecounties/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8900000/8900417.stm

Bloomfield, A. (2013) Lethal Autonomous Robotics: UN Calls For Global Moratorium On Killer Robots. Retrieved from http://www.policymic.com/articles/39017/lethal-autonomous-robotics-un-calls-for-global-moratorium-on-killer-robots

Chessbase (2012 October 29). Houdini 3 – the world's strongest chess engine in the Fritz. interface. Retrieved from http://en.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/PostId/4008591

Christensen, B. (2009 August 24). Robots Learn to Lie. Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/10574-robots-learn-lie.html

Deep Blue (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/deepblue/

Fry, A. (2011 July 27). A Cubic Millimeter of Your Brain. Retrieved from

http://theastronomist.fieldofscience.com/2011/07/cubic-millimeter-of-your-brain.html

Freitas, R.A.Jr. (1985 January 13). The Legal Rights of Robots. Retrieved from http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/LegalRightsOfRobots.htm

Global Security.org (2011 July 11). Samsung Techwin SGR-A1 Sentry Guard Robot. Retrieved from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/rok/sgr-a1.htm

Goertzel, B. (2011 August 17) Does Humanity Need an AI Nanny? Retrieved from http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/08/17/does-humanity-need-an-ai-nanny/Grachev, G, Trans. (2006 September 11) Humanoid robots existed in ancient civilizations. Retrieved from http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/11-09-2006/84374-robots-0/#

Guizzo, E (2011 October 18). How Google's Self-Driving Car Works. Retrieved from http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/how-google-self-driving-car-works

Keiper, A., A.N. Schulman. (2011).The Problem with 'Friendly' Artificial Intelligence, The New Atlantis, Number 32, p. 80-89.

Pilkington, E (2013 May 29). 'Killer robots' pose threat to peace and should be banned, UN warned. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/may/29/killer-robots-ban-un-warning

Smith, C., McGuire, B., Huang, T., Yang, G. (2006 December). The History of Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved from http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/csep590/06au/projects/history-ai.pdf

Stewart, B. (n.d.). Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence (AI) Conference. Retrieved from http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_ai.htm

The Economist (2012 June 2). Morals and the machine. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/node/21556234

TWC Week 7

This week's lecture was a continuation of the Bio business revolution, and was focused on the agricultural and environmental side., with an important emphasis on being able to supply the world with enough food.

An interesting observation that caught my attention was despite the modernized world we live in today, there's still a significant chunk of the world's population who do not have enough to eat and are in danger of starvation, especially with more than enough food for the world's population.

I had a couple of key take away points from the session with regards to food security. It seems that the trend to solve the food supply issue is through using technology like genetically modified food, which is bringing us into uncharted areas, especially since nobody knows the long term health effects of consumption of GM food. Another key takeaway point would be the increasingly urgent need for us to settle our waste as our world continues to progress. Recycling biomass has been increasingly common today, but something still needs to be done about non biodegradable waste like plastics.

I feel that an issue for further discussion could be despite the new and evolving technologies to solve our increasingly urgent food supply and environmental issues, will we one day reach a point where the problems become so huge that technology will not be able to solve these issues anymore?

8/10