Introduction
GNM2209
Intelligent Machine and Human
Beings
Unprecedented 2 Centuries
• Human beings achieved terrific progress in
science and technology in the 19th and 20th
centuries in the spectrum of 6,000 years of
human civilization history,
A Generation of
Unprecedented Luck
• Comparing to our predecessors, we are the
most fortunate generation(s).
• Thinking of our descendants, we are
possibly the most fortunate generation(s).
A Generation of
Unprecedented Responsibility
• Human has generated wealth and happiness,
as well as problems that threat ourselves
and our offspring.
• Technology provides individuals with more
power of destruction.
A Blade of Two Edges
• Many technologies are characterized with
potentials of both construction and
destruction.
Computer Era
• The first industrial revolution was
symbolized by flying shuttle and steam
engine.
• The second industrial revolution is
symbolized by computer.
ENIAC
John Mauchly and
J. Presper Eckert
Alan Turing
John von Neumann
Marvin Minsky
Extension of Our Brain
• Machine tools are extension of our muscles.
• Computers are extension of our brains.
• Robots are extension of our brains and
muscles.
Triumphing and Prevailing of
Computers
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Personal computer
Internet
Super computers
Built-in computer in equipment
Inescapable Impacts
• Computers are ubiquitous.
• Computers are penetrating to our daily
life.
Machines
• A machine is a man-made
mechanism that is composed of parts
and components and is able to fulfill
designated jobs.
Machines and workers in 1920s
Ole fashioned printing machine
Radial drilling machine
A lathe and its former operator, 2002
Audio tape recorder
Cassette recorder
ipad
Make Inflexible Machine Flexible
• One distinct characteristic of human
intelligence is flexibility.
• Computer and machine are not flexible.
• Artificial intelligence is the study to make
inflexible machine flexible.
At present,
Benefits and Challenges
• Benefits computers have brought to us:
• Challenges computers have brought to us:
In Future,
Opportunities and Threats
• Opportunities:
• Threats:
Turn Threats into Challenges
• The computer era is coming unstoppable.
• Understand the opportunities, benefits, and
threats.
• Take opportunities, harness benefits, and
turn threats into challenges.
Can Machine Be Humanlike?
• Is it possible that a machine is, or
more, capable of the full range of
human intelligence and mentality?
• Are we create a species that is superior
over humans?
• This is an open question.
Dualism vs. Monism
• Dualism:
– Mind is something quite separate from,
and deeply from, the physical world.
• Monism:
– Mind emerges as nothing but the playing
out of ordinary physical states and
processes in the familiar physical world
Ray Kurzweil
• “I set the date … as 2045. The nonbiological
intelligence created in that year will be one
billion times more powerful than all human
intelligence today.”
• “By the late 2020, we will … create
nonbiological systems that match and exceed
the complexity and subtlety of humans,
including our emotional intelligence.”
• From his book <The singularity is near>, 2005
Ray Kurzweil
We Can, Why Not Silicon?
• How could a device made of silicon be
conscious? How could it feel pain, joy, fear,
pleasure, and foreboding? It certainly seems
unlikely that such exotic capacities should
flourish in such an unusual silicon setting.
But a moment’s reflection should convince
you that it is equally amazing that such
capacities should show up in carbon-based
meat …
- Andy Clark, 2001
Prof. Andy Clark
G. Gilder & J. Richards
• “If we’re a carbon-based, complex,
computational, collocation of atoms,
and we’re conscious, then why
wouldn’t the same be true for a
sufficiently complex silicon-based
computer?”
• From their book <Are we spiritual machine?> 2002
Bill Joy’s Warning
• How soon could such an intelligent robot be
built? The coming advances in computing
power seem to make it possible by 2030. And
once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a
small step to a robot species - to an intelligent
robot that can make evolved copies of itself.
• Researches leading to the danger should be
relinquished
- From “Why the future doesn’t need us”
2000, Wired magazine
T. Kaczynski’s
Anxiety
• If trend continue and scientists succeed in
developing intelligent machines that can do
all things better than human beings can do
them, … the fate of the human race would
be at the mercy of the machines. They will
have been reduced to the status of domestic
animals.”
- Unabomber’s manifesto, 1995
Jeff Hawkins
• Can computers be intelligent? For
decades, scientists in the field of
artificial intelligence have claimed
that computers will be intelligent
when they are powerful enough. I
don’t think so, … Brains and
computers do fundamentally
different things.
• From his book <On Intelligence>, 2004
Roger Penrose
• I do my best to express, in a
dispassionate way, my scientific reasons
for disbelieving electronic computers
would be capable of consciousness and
arguing that the conscious minds can
find no home within our present-day
scientific world-view.”
• From his book <The emperor’s new mind> 1999
Douglas R. Hofstadter
• “Will emotions be explicitly programmed
into a machine? No. That is ridiculous.
Any direct simulation of emotions cannot
approach the complexity of human
emotions, which arise indirectly from the
organization of our minds. Programs or
machines will acquire emotions in the same
way: as by-products of their structure, of the
way in which they are organized – not by
direct programming.”
• From his book < Godel, Escher, Bach>, 1999
John Searle
• Computer programs are codes. They
are not intelligence.
Topic of this Class
• Introduction: - Computer, impact on us now
and future.
• Computer and AI basis
– Computer hardware, software, algorithm
– Artificial intelligence
• Subjects, Turing machine, Turing test
• Computer and us, - now and future
Goals of this Class
• Learning:
– Knowledge about computers, artificial
intelligence, and their development.
• Thinking:
– Critically, logically, scientifically,
fairmindedly, and philosophically.
Approach of this Class
• Open to arguments, possibly head-on, on
various issues on machine and human being
through reading articles, videos, lectures,
and discussions.
• By savoring the arguments, turning them
over and taking them apart, we expect to
come up with insights into the destiny of
human and machine, opportunity and threat.
• Answers may not be “correct” or “wrong”,
but they must be “good”.
Going on Two Parallel Lines
• Readings – Lectures / Videos – Homework
– Quizzes
– Covering themes of this course
• Thought labs
– Touching key concepts and techniques in
computer intelligence