In general, nobody has a clue. IT depends upon what you mean by artificial intelligence. A lot of what started off in the artificial intelligence realm, has since become useful algorithms in computer science and are no longer considered aspects of AI. Many parts of AI have generated extremely useful tools (heuristics, fuzzy logic, expert systems, NLP, etc) - but don't really meet the criteria for intelligence. Then again, what generally happens is that when a problem is posited as needing intelligence, and somebody solves it, it no longer "needs" intelligence. Who knows, but maybe once you remove the mystery, the human mind can no longer think of an action as requiring intelligence. Much as magic, needs mystery, to work.
Also nobody can really agree on what "intelligence" is, or whether it matters. Or for that matter consciousness. Some neuro specialists claim that its nothing more than our brains making sense of the feedback from our actions, or just loops spinning uselessly. Given that free will is less "free" than we typically think (when you think "move your arm", the arm has already moved. Nobody is quite sure what the implications of that fact are), aspects of what we consider intelligence, may have nothing to do with consciousness.
The most positive (or negative I guess) developments of recent years have been in neural nets, which are basically models of the brain. These can do some really remarkable things. Some guy has built self-drive cars using them, there have been experiements with self-fly planes, and I read something about little insect robots being built with them. They require huge amounts of processing power, so we're a way off, but they could lead to something that would be able to replace us. Interestingly, no one really knows why neural networks work, when they work. The mathematics to understand them is horrendous, and consequently beyond a certain level of complexity, they become mysterious and amusingly unpredictable.
Cian
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org]On Behalf Of Charles Brown Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 3:48 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: [lbo-talk] What's at stake?
From: "Luke Weiger"
http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20010905S0004
--__--__-- "In contrast with our intellect, computers double their performance every 18 months," warned the genius physicist in a recent interview with the German newsmagazine Focus. "So the danger is real that they could develop intelligence and take over the world." -clip
^^^^^ CB: I know Stephen Hawking is more intelligent than I am, but can we discuss this ? Isn't there some qualitative difference between artificial and "real" intelligence still ?
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