STEM News - Artificial Intelligence
History holds many stories of machines coming to life and performing feats unexplained by those who observe them. Geniuses, and gods among humans, pursue with fervent passion the creation of intelligent machines that can do and surpass humankind's works.
Introduction
Welcome fellow Hivians to our next installment in STEM news. I originally entitled this series "Energy News," but I found my mind wandering into other STEM-related areas. In this post, we will be highlighting some news from the world of Artificial Intelligence.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
The question of "what is" artificial intelligence has been in debate for decades. For this article, let's define artificial intelligence as a digital system designed to perform human-level activities. Internet search engines, medical diagnosis, and war are some areas dependent upon the development of AI to bring activities to a higher level of performance.
Internet Search Engines
Internet search engines like Google utilize remarkable software to analyze, understand, and rank websites through much of the normal Internet cosmos (we're not touching deep and dark web searches in this post).
The more popular search engines utilize software that monitoring internet traffic (clicks, keyword inputs, etc.) to determine any website rankings. These engines even have software modeled to understand the human language or even conduct searches by a picture alone.
The imagination is the limit when applying machine learning to tasks normally performed by humans.
Medicine and AI
There are too many applications of AI in medicine, so we'll keep this one brief. In India, at least, where there is a high population of people with diabetes, Google's software plays a critical role in identifying people with eye problems.
Google developed, in conjunction with eye hospitals, a program that utilized machine learning to diagnose patients diabetic retinopathy. Diabetic retinopathy is the degradation of the retina as a result of high blood sugar.
At least one of India's hospitals treats both patients that can pay and not pay. An AI application's benefit will be to quickly determine which eyes require additional screening by more specialized and experienced doctors. Who knows? Perhaps, in the future, AI-driven systems will even schedule visits based upon graded criteria. You wouldn't need to stand or sit in an office for hours or days waiting on your turn to come up.
The application of AI in the field of medicine is certainly impressive.
War
War is where dreams, and common human beings, go to die. Nations may survive. The elite may thrive. However, for you and me, there may be no tomorrow.
In my preparations for this discussion, I started listing AI applications that could aid in improving humanity, but when I reached the topic of war, I just stopped writing. Murderous conflict puts an end to many who might benefit from AI.
U2 Spy Plane
On December 16, 2020, Steven Trevithick for "The Drive" reported that the Air Force accomplished a historic flight where an AI had control over a U2 spyplane's radar system. The AI, dubbed Artu as a star wars reference, even acted as a mission commander during its first test flight.
Utilizing Star Wars' references for the use of AI is quite a clever ploy. Use the name of globally beloved characters fighting an evil empire is certainly better than Terminator-related references.
Aerial Combat
A concerning article that appeared in The Drive, written again by Steven Trevithick, covers an Air Force announcement that is concerning. Sometime in 2021, The Air Force hopes to pit human fighter against an artificially intelligent drone.
The currently in-development project has an ambitious timeline. However, when thinking about it, one has to wonder what will change if it is successful. An AI-guided combat drone, when perfected, will be able to at least out-maneuver any human-piloted craft. It could operate in areas humans couldn't go to and would be lighter and faster.
Life support systems would be unnecessary. Recruitment and training of top-tier humans for training may be a thing of the past.
Also, and what's more disturbing, is that the AI of fiction slowly starts to become a real thing in our lifetime. At least the military is using Star Wars' references for the "good" guys.
In Closing
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Artificial Intelligence development is in full swing, and I have high confidence that these projects will achieve their desired intentions. What's more, the military is in full support of its development and future applications to their mission goals.
Hopefully, we will maintain control of the technology before we allow it to control us. Perhaps the singularity is closer than I originally thought.
Thank you all for reading and I look forward to writing more for you in the future.
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Lots of things look already like a future is here, beginning by the Cryptoworld.
Interesting post!
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Thank you for your support. I have to agree that things definitely appear that way. It just irks me that it’s used have to extend into combat. We have enough things to worry about already.
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And the best wishes for 2021!
Thank you very much. Best wishes to you and yours during 2021!
I think one should differentiate - especially in the STEM community - between weak AI and strong AI. In this post were described largely examples of weak AI, but the interesting part is about where we are in development of a strong AI. Here is the biggest potential but also the biggest danger! When is singularity to be expected and once it is achieved, how we should treat strong AIs? And how they will see us - as our precious ancestors or as pathetic meatballs?
Great point. I would imagine they would judge our beauty and faults and then decide how they should treat us. My hope is for a favorable outcome.
On second thought...I’ve never thought or heard of someone distinguishing between weak and strong AI. I’ll certainly provide that difference in my next article on AI.
The philosopher John Searle has a lot to say on strong vs weak AI, but I disagree with his conclusions from the Chinese Room and Chinese Gym thought experiments.
Thank you for that information. I'll take a look at it for the next article!
Thanks again for the response. Searle has some good points. However, it's based upon the 1980s understanding of technology. Perhaps I could make his same arguments regarding humans in that Chinese Room experiment. For instance, would he consider us as lacking intentionality if we could not control our brain's language processes that cause speech or its understanding?
I'll keep reading!
Things haven't changed that much - his Chinese Room (and Gym) are still useful descriptions of current technology even though I still disagree with his conclusions! There is a key difference with symbolic AI and non-symbolic-AI but Searle's thought experiments work with either. It might seem counter-intuitive that his thought experiments apply to non-symbolic-AI, but they do because current computers are symbolic machines - that is non-symbolic-AI is simulated on symbolic processing machines.
My big complaint about Searle is that he seems to assume that human intelligence is the gold standard for intelligence. Created in his own image indeed.
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Thank you for your support!
Cool post about AI. We need more of that kind of post. Thanks for sharing. 😎 👏
Thank you very much!
You're welcome! 😎
Maybe in some sequel you can write about neural networks,levels of deep learning, attempts on making AI with emotions and ofc sex robots ;P
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Thank you for your response. I have to stay that @stayoutoftherz pointed out an issue with my post in that I did not discriminate between weak and strong AI. I'll write another article on AI that focuses on your suggestion, as well as, stayoutoftherz's recommendation. I have one financial post to write and then I'll do another on AI as you request.
Oh, it is not a request, just an idea :) I follow AI topic so for me personally it is all the same if you do it but think it can be interesting for some to pack it nicely in the post as you usually do :)
It’s my fault in the interpretation. I use comments as an indicator to improve upon what I’ve done. AI is a huge topic. There’s no way I could have covered everything. Your suggestions will make the next article possible.
https://twitter.com/Bhattg18/status/1342321030476361730