Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence Research Paper

Genesis, creation, the very beginning; from his inception, man has endeavored to control, to name, to create ultimately in his own image as he was created from God. Man forges his own destiny from the coals of his imagination and the raw iron of his will to create. His tools have changed as time has passed, but his desire, his fire to create; to change his world has not.

Time and technology can temper mans creativity, but the desire burns as strong today as ever. Art, literature, and technology; be it paint, paper or steel mans creativity is manifest in everything we do. The crowning jewel for man will be to pass on that spark with which he has been entrusted, robotics, genetic engineering, and their ilk have been trying to create new life from the raw tools with which man is so proficient. It can be said that as Prometheus took fire from the heavens to give to man, so shall man give fire of another kind, and be it biological or made from the cold steel and silicon gateways through which we now travel man will at last, have his legacy. There is a caveat however, with knowledge comes change, with creation comes difference, and with difference comes fear, hatred and discrimination. People have forever shunned that which they do not understand, that which is different from the face they see in the mirror in the morning.

Since initial forays into the AI field in 1950 there have been philosophical as well as technical concerns.

As technology advanced and the concept of a machine that “thinks” became more and more plausible the philosophy became more apparent. The basic problem we are confronted with is: Can machines think?

In his book entitled Philosophical perspectives in artificial intelligence, Martin Ringle calls for “ a logical and semantic analysis of the concepts of ‘thought’, ‘intelligence’, ‘consciousness’, and ‘machine’, rather than an empirical assessment of computer behaviour” (hjhjh,999,2000). Thusly from its birthing AI has been regarded as an unknown, a concept that by its very name challenges nearly every norm and convention we have as individuals and as a society.

Thusly because of its inherent alien nature artificial life will be subject to the same prejudices as race, gender and religion, once it is integrated into society and assumes roles associated with humans. As we vent...

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...eality—a paradigm in which both human and computer share a real physical space within which to make hand gestures, facial displays, body movements, and real physical objects that can be passed back and forth between the real and virtual world”

Scholars have long been trying to quantify the actual differences between “brain” and “mind” as well as the degree to which psychology can be converted into a physical science. Society as an entity seems unwilling to make leaps of judgment or significant paradigm shifts dealing with such concepts. The realms of the physical and the more nebulous sciences of the mind must for the time being remain separate. Once we begin to mesh technology more closely with ourselves as humans we can begin to accept it as a part of ourselves and as a part of our society. While today we do not possess the technology to achieve a truly sentient machine we cannot because of that speculate too deeply as to the results of such an achievement. The image of a cold “Terminator” style robot or perhaps HAL from 2001 is perhaps the exact opposite of the eventual reality. We cannot form opinions without the proper grounding in science, philosophy and indeed, ourselves.