by Eddie French

Created on: September 23, 2007

Artificial Intelligence

Heaven or Hell?

Moore's law states that computing power doubles every 18 months. This is not an aggregate result reflecting the increasing use of moderately efficient computers on a worldwide scale, it is a literal statement concerning the rapidly growing computational power of individual machines which are commercially available to anybody with the means to acquire them.

Since its inception, the this law has proved to be true in most respects and even exceeded on occasion.

As computing power increases, more complex tasks are able to be undertaken by these machines, ranging from simple computation to complicated prediction modelling, all in the hope of making our lives easier or more fulfilling.

Artificial Intelligence is one branch of computer science which is emerging as a leading goal of many computer scientists and specialists. Most A.I. systems in use today aim to take knowledge from human experts in particular fields and use that knowledge to achieve results/conclusions similar to those that the human expert would achieve when faced with identical problems to be solved. Already, some success has been achieved by using these systems in certain areas - mainly medical diagnosis of ailments unique to the human condition.

Another A.I. area being developed is the quest for Intelligence for intelligence sake.

How intelligent can a machine become. Can a machine 'learn' from experience?. Can it then use what it has learned to become more intelligent?

The final question must be;
Can a machine ever become self aware?

Our society is at present using these systems with increasing dependency. Today, if every computer or 'thinking machine' suddenly stopped working, our whole society would collapse within hours. Our dependency is almost complete.

These machines can, at present, be disabled by human interference, software glitches or wear and tear of physical components. There is no other way, excluding natural disasters, that breakdown can occur.

As these systems become more complex and begin to intrude into even the most basic of human activities, the greater this risk becomes.

Eventually scientists may produce a system which can be integrated into a mobile hardware environment. The shape and size of this hardware depends only on the ingenuity of the people involved in the research and development. It is possible that the hardware could closely resemble a human being.
If we put the two fields of research together then we could end up producing a viable Mech'

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