by Shawn Schafer

Created on: February 05, 2009

People 'ooh' and 'awww' over the concept of artificial intelligence, and some are even frightened by it. In truth, one could argue that all computer programming is artificial intelligence in one form or another. To firmly get a handle on what exactly artificial intelligence is and to attempt to answer some of the questions about it, we first need to get a working and widely accepted and acceptable definition of it. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary gives the following definitions:

1
: a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers

2
: the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior

This can be stated as the overall purpose of most or at least part of all computer programs and robotics. The keyword is artificial. A robot or computer never truly has intelligence, it merely follows the directions encoded into it by a programmer. Computers and robots are designed to do or assist in tasks that would be more difficult or dangerous for humans alone.

Artificial Intelligence is the goal and challenge of most programming. The programmer has to find a way to give the computer instructions that imitate intelligent human behavior accurately. Video games, robotics, search engines, Internet security, every branch of computer science involves artificial intelligence to some degree. The advantage and disadvantages to artificial intelligence are numerous.

A computer is not influenced by emotion; and thus not hindered by the difficulties associated with this. This also means ;however, that computers cannot make a human judgement based on emotion. This has not become a problem yet in the real world but it has been the topic of many science fiction books and movies. Movies like The Terminator and Fail Safe show that machines made to kill would have no regard for human life. This is the main problem with the idea of combat robots designed to fight along side of humans. There is no problem with robots used to disarm bombs or to get surveillance of areas that would be dangerous for humans to go, but if robots start being designed and programmed to take out enemy targets, what happens if there is a flaw in the programming? A robot could not perfectly judge whether or not to kill a civilian or a friendly soldier.

Another advantage of artificial intelligence is that computers don't feel pain or become tired, and for these reasons and others, often work much more quickly and efficiently that humans on simple but laboriously

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