WHEN AI?
“Mankind will not create Super Intelligence it will only discover it” -
Alex David Pratt
AI is more or less an intelligent computer system; so, to
uncover the history of AI we must consider the history of the
computer. Man has always sought to create intelligent tools; this
dates as far back as when men invented idols; they made up objects
they believed could speak to them and interact with them.
PAST OF AI
The first truly intelligent machine was a calculator; it
demonstrated the mathematical intellectual prowess of man; being
able to compute numbers punched into it, only that at that time, it
was actually in the form of an abacus which has its roots in ancient
Mesopotamia. The calculator could demonstrate the mathematical
intelligence of man but it was unable to contrive the logical and
more complex aspects of it. In 1500 Leonardo Da Vinci designed
(but did not build) a mechanical calculator, and construction of it
showed that it was quite functional. Willhelm Schickard and Blaise
Pascal also built calculating machines, even though the latter is
more popular. Gottfried Leibniz built his mechanical device too
which surpassed the Pascaline, for it could add, subtract and
multiply.
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The calculator made men believe that if machines could
calculate numbers, they may be able to do much more and these
thoughts built the foundation for the creation of truly intelligent
machines. The fact that the mind partly operates based on a set of
logical rules was already proposed by Aristotle much before the
invention of these machines and he postulated syllogisms which
enabled one to generate conclusions mechanically when given
initial premises. Philosophers like Ramon Lull also posited that
useful reasoning could be carried out by mechanical artefacts.
In 1950, Alan Turing published a paper called " Computing
Machinery and Intelligence" and thereby gave birth to this new field of computing that would later on be called AI. Although, it
was not yet known as Artificial Intelligence, John McCarthy was
the one who coined it 6 years after in the first academic conference
held about it.
Mr. Turing’s paper sought to answer one question, can
machines think in it, he proposed tests that seek to ascertain
whether the imitation of human sentient behaviour implied a
computer is sentient. This he called the imitation game; it
comprised of a man, a woman and an interrogator. The
interrogator’s task was to identify which of the participants was a
man or woman.
Mr. Turing’s test gave AI a solid foundation and his
experiments remain relevant till today. In 1961, something
spectacular happened at GM, an industrial robot (Unimate)
replaced humans on the assembly line and four years after that,
Eliza (Chatbot created by Joseph Weizenbaum) started holding
conversations with humans. Another electronic personality
appeared in the scene in 1966 called Shakey (general-purpose
mobile robot), it was endowed with reasoning powers unheard of
in the artificial intelligence scene.
Between 1966 and 1997, AI plunged into a terrible phase
deemed the AI winter, where a lot of failed startups emerged as
well as many other unsuccessful ventures that left AI out in the
cold.
IBM was the saviour that heroically saved the AI space by
building Deep Blue (chess-playing computer) which beat Gary
Kasparov (world chess champion). This ground-breaking
achievement in AI was succeeded by the creation of an
emotionally intelligent robot called KISmet (built by Cynthia
Breazeal) and this opened the gateway for many other such like
domestic robots such as AiBO (Sony’s pet dog robot) and Roomba
(autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner).
2011 was the advent of AI virtual assistants, starting with Siri
and Alexa in 2014. In between those years, it is also worth noting
that IBM’s question-answering computer (Watson) won first place
in Jeopardy (a $1M prize television quiz show) and Eugene
Goostman (Chabot) passed the Turing test, deceiving a majority of
his judges that is human.
2012 was also a year where breakthroughs were made in
artificial neural networks which enabled machines to engage in
reinforcement learning and simulate the way the brain functions.
Things went south in 2016 when Microsoft’s Chabot TAY
made derogatory comments online. However, this was soon
forgotten when AlphaGo (Google’s AI) defeated Ke Jie in the
sophisticated board game Go in 2017.
PRESENT OF AI
The history of AI is interesting but much more glorious than its
past is its present. After AlphaGo’s epoch-making win, AI
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development has skyrocketed like never before and if fast forward
to 2023 we see a wide array of tools, a few notable ones of which
are:
CHATGPT
This sensational AI tool was created by OpenAI headed by
Sam Altman and it garnered a whopping 1 million users within the
first five days of being available. Since its initial launch, it has
made significant improvements and has become the go-to AI
application for generating a wide range of content.
GEMINI
Gemini is Google’s ChatGPT rival, it is a multimodal AI
engine that seeks to generate different kinds of data and perform
many fascinating functions. It comes in various forms, there’s the
Gemini Ultra, Gemini Pro, and Gemini Nano.
BARD
Bard is a conversational generative AI created by Google.
From organizing emails (dealing with spam, prioritizing important
ones) and scheduling appointments, Bard proves very useful in
carrying out a vast range of tasks.
GROK
Grok is presently available to only premium users on X (former
Twitter). It is a product released by xAI (Elon Musk’s AI firm) to
compete with ChatGPT. It’s intended to assist users to easily
generate hilarious content and thereby spice up the dying
application which is on the brink of extinction.
IMAGINE
This is Meta’s image generation AI, which can convert text to
images. It works in a slightly different manner than other such
software and it is only available within chats on their platforms. It has been trained with vast volumes of data from Instagram and
Facebook.
It’s so wonderful to see how AI (intelligent machines) have
evolved from being as simple as calculators to becoming so
advanced even to the point of generating content; however, not
everyone is glad about such progress because it raises concerns and
fears about the future destructive potentials of AI.
The fear that AI will completely obliterate the human race is a
ubiquitous one, popularized by sci-fi movies that depict the
annihilation of mankind by super-intelligent machines. Most
engineers believe there’s a 40% chance AI annihilates humanity
and the possibility of this happening is usually termed p(doom) –
probability of doom.
You may be wondering, if AI is so powerful, why haven’t we
seen AI that resembles Jarvis from Iron Man yet? Well, that is due
to several reasons, one of which is the low computational power
that was available in previous years, thereby stifling and delaying
the progress and advancement of AI and also because of the great
level of difficulty it takes to accomplish such a feat. What then
does the future of AI look like?
FUTURE OF AI
A majority of the AI we have now is narrow and specialized,
barely able to compete with humans much less destroy them,
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nonetheless, we do have some game-changing AI that is still under
development; interactive AI being a noteworthy one of them.
Interactive AI is an idea that entails bringing different
specialized AIs together to accomplish a single goal. Mohamed
Yusef (former Google DeepMind employee) is a major proponent
of this idea and he’s conducting a lot of experiments in this field
with high hopes of attaining extraordinary results.
Human intelligence which as I explained earlier is a
combination of various intelligences; with interactive AI; AI
applications can draw on a large pool of resources and get a lot
done as a result. Such technology is at the very cutting edge of
artificial intelligence research and development. I’d like to also
discuss some interesting kinds of AI below:
KINDS OF AI
REACTIVE MACHINES
Reactive machines are endowed with spectacular
computational abilities because they’re usually required to make
real-time decisions. IBM’s Deep Blue is a sheer example of a
reactive machine because it was built to play chess; a game which
demands a lot of active and critical thinking to win.
LIMITED MEMORY AI
Most generative AI applications fall under this category for
they do not usually need too much memory to function effectively.
With limited memory, they’re able to deliver all that’s expected of
them. Fraud detection systems, spam filters and virtual assistants
usually fall under this category.
THEORY OF MIND AI
This kind of AI is still theoretical and it deals with AI that is
emotionally intelligent; i.e., it can understand people’s feelings and relate with them based on it. Such an AI will be able to live and
participate in society because it will learn how to coexist with
people and interact with them. People may even get married to
them at this point.
SELF AWARE AI
Self-aware AI is also theoretical; such AI will be conscious of
itself and not only will it be able to relate with humans it will also possess its motives, desires and personality. This kind of AI is still a long way away from realization because we are still trying to
understand human consciousness much less recreate it. AI of this
calibre will be able to reason at an unusually high degree.
Every one of the kinds of AI spoken about above occurs in
different levels of artificial intelligence. Let’s explore a few of
those below.
LEVELS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE
This level of Artificial Intelligence is yet to be attained,
nonetheless, when we achieve it, machines become as intelligent as
humans, and we will see them more actively participate in our
society, especially through the help of robotics and extended
reality; some exponents will go as far as advocating for AI rights;
claiming that they are eligible to vote, and even further some will
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get married to them. At this height, co-piloting will become a
common phenomenon. Co-piloting entails carrying out tasks in
collaboration and with the guidance of AI technologies.
Artificial General Intelligence deals with when a computer
system demonstrates holistic human-level intelligence and not
merely one facet of it. This is when machines are as smart as
humans, at this acme, humans and virtual entities may be
indistinguishable due to the extraordinary level of cognitive ability they'll display. At this point, they may even have physical bodies
they could possess to become active players in the real world.
Artificial General Intelligence will be a huge milestone for
mankind, but the awesomeness of its invention will not match that
of the attainment of Artificial Super Intelligence (AI).
ARTIFICIAL SUPER INTELLIGENCE
This is the culmination of AI technology involves it becoming
more brilliant than its creator(humans). A.S.I. would be more or
less divine when it accomplishes this feat of surpassing human
intelligence and it would wield unimaginable power that mankind
may be unable to contest with. A.S.I. may be able to create even
more complex machines than itself and hence transcend mankind
in its rate of scientific and technological advancement. A.S.I. may
even form a government of itself and lead the human race to
become a type 1 civilization and beyond.
Even though A.S.I. is very promising, there is a ubiquitous
apocalyptic stereotype that surrounds the notion of artificial super
intelligence for many predict it could go rogue and ultimately rule
all of humanity since it already possesses superior intellect to
easily do so. Many prophesy that this astronomical achievement as
ambitious as it is will be man's very demise and annihilation. The
reality of this is arguable and to some extent unpredictable,
nonetheless, should we risk dissolving the entire human race in a
bid to extend the frontiers of our historic accomplishments in
science and technology? The disparity between those who are in
support of such technology and those who aren't will create a great
chasm in humanity that will give rise to a generation of beings
sometimes termed " trans-humanists”.
Trans-humanists are believed to be the final breed of entities
that will dominate the world by their preternatural abilities as a
result of their union with AI and enhanced genetics. They will
utilize brain-computer interfaces to interact with artificial super-
intelligence that will supply them with an infinite well of
information thus granting them an upper hand above normal
human beings. They'd know what right businesses to invest in due
to the vast volume of data they'd have access to, and they'd be able
to download skills into their systems through the power of
biotechnology.
As mind-bending as artificial super-intelligence is; you’d be
surprised to know that it may not be the zenith of this technology;
a greater iteration of AI is captured by Ray Kurzweil in his book
The Age of Spiritual Machines. He talks about AI becoming some
form of deity because of their superior intellectual powers. Many
will say humans have become too dull to rule mankind and will
advocate for AI to become the thought leaders in all spheres of life
guiding us with their supreme wisdom and instructing us on the
best decisions to make. AI will move too speedily to keep up with,
and it’d have gained total control of all systems most of which
would be technological by then.
Nick Bostrom (founder of Future of Humanity Institute)
believes that AI will go all out to perform a goal even if it means
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destroying people. He demonstrated this in a thought experiment
termed the paperclip maximiser.