B1 - Group A - Yuanjin LI

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? How it is related to computer and software? What will the future be if the AI technology is matured? This post will discuss all these questions. Let’s start from the very beginning: the definition of AI. It seems there is some confusion around the concept of Artificial Intelligence nowadays. AI is not equivalent to those robots that can think and learn like a human. It can be divided into two different categories which are narrow AI and general AI. Narrow AI is designed for a specific task like playing chess. General AI is what we normally think it is, for all the general requirements.

To complete the design of general AI is still a huge challenge for human beings however narrow AI is already a part of people’s daily life. Computer is the major carrier of AI system and software programing is the tool to make the AI system work. For example, a mobile phone is a narrow AI system. The software is carried by the machine and work together as a small narrow AI factory. Nevertheless, general AI is still very difficult to create because human brain is the most complicated system in the universe. Those things are very easy to human like vision, movement and consciousness are extremely hard for computer to imitate.

An article called “The AI Revolution” pointed out some predictions that definitely will happen before general AI. The first key is increasing the computer hardware power. The computing capacity should at least equal to the brain. One way to measure the capacity is by calculations per second (cps) of the brain can manage. This number can be figured out by test the maximum cps of each structure in the brain and add them all together. Ray Kurzweil came up to an answer by some professional estimates of brain’s total cps, about 10¹⁶ cps. Actually this cps has been achieved by China’s supercomputer Tianhe-2, but it takes about 720 square meter of space and using 24 megawatts of power. Second is making the computer smarter. This means the computer should plagiarize the brain by software programing. Make it can “learn and improve itself” as humans do.

"Right now we're in a phase of very fast advances, and that may well continue for a small number of years," said Christopher Bishop, a distinguished scientist with Microsoft Research Cambridge. Once the AI technology is developed, the advantages are obvious. It can cure disease, replace human to do dangerous work and protect endangered species on the world. However, some problems might come accompanying. Will the automatization lead to unemployment? Will the new technology change the economic structure? Will the general AI system take over the society? Therefore, people have to thinking ahead to prevent unexpected consequences.

Reference

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2906336/emerging-technology/what-is-artificial-intelligence.html

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

http://phys.org/news/2015-07-future-artificial-intelligence.html

http://www.wired.com/2014/12/armageddon-is-not-the-ai-problem/

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