Hello Human, We Are Friends
ElifSert
İzmir Institute of Technology
2016-2017 Fall Semester – Chemical Engineering
Artificial Intelligence, shortly AI
, is the ability of a machine or a computer that allows the machine to think and act as an “intelligent form” (Copeland, 2010). Its development is nearly sixty years old and the name artificial intelligence came from a conference in Dartmouth College in 1956 (Brunette, 2009). We can say that it is a new thing for our billion-year-old world. Thanks to our era of communication, everybody is aware of artificial intelligence and everybody has different considerations on it. Generally, there are two main ideas on AI: artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence or it will not. Although most of the people think that it can outclass our intelligence, machine learning cannot surpass human intelligence and there are two main points to consider, even we say it is smart,AI does not have any special features, such as creativity, to be superior to humans and it is in need of human intelligence to operate and their intelligence without other abilities, like willpower, is not enough.
First, despite the speed and accuracy and all other edges that machines and robots have over humans, creativity is the field in which AI cannot compete with humans because of the restriction of the artificial intelligence to perform out of the defined parameters.Creativity, which is defined and perceived as bringing forth something new, creating something new or inventing something new, is a characteristic indigenous to human beings. For example, an artist is creative if he/she produces his/her unique artwork depicting something the viewers have not seen before, or their aesthetics have not experienced.This is where humans still have the advantage. It is true that computers will be extremely good at finding the right placements, audiences, efficiencies, but people are entrepreneurs, visionaries, and risk takers. We create solutions to problems we don’t even know exist yet. We try new things for the sake of learning. We break norms, think outside the box, and create art and culture. People are incredibly capable and will continue to be. For now, AI is going to expand the realm of possibility by speeding up and optimizing the processes that could take humans much more time (“A Brief History”, 2005). While AI is busy finding these answers, we can spend time being creative, finding new ways to interact with others, creating emotional connections, and trying something different. In reality, this is a large part of what we already do, and things will stay that way for a while.
Thanks to technological developments, human beings created AI; therefore, from their beginning to now smart machines have always been in need of human intelligence, which prevents them from being superior to humans. We can explain our relationship with AI like that: we create information and they store information, they make new forms of it from our equations and from our expectations (Brunette et al., 2009). Moreover, people created ‘Friendly AI’. According toYudkowsky (2001), “…the term ‘Friendly AI’ refers to the production of human-benefiting, non-humanharming actions in Artificial Intelligence systems that have advanced to the point of making real-world plans in pursuit of goals.” (p.2).In every phase of our lives, we use them. For example, in factories we use the friendly expert systems to make processes faster and fertile. However, again their knowledge is actually our knowledge and they can do nothing without people. To exemplify, robotic surgery is well-known and useful today, but think about it, if human beings do not give the right information and the right techniques to these robots, how can they perform these operations? As human beings created AI, it would only respond and behave in a capacity known to its creator, therefore, expecting it to act out of the parameters apparently will not be expected—the machine cannot, therefore, prove to be more intelligent than its creator.
Some people seem to believe that artificial intelligence can go beyond human intelligence.Alan Turing (1996) said, “… it seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers.”(p.259).The people fearful of the rise of machines and technology believe this with certainty that machines have the ability to adapt to changes more instantly than humans, who take time to recognize, comprehend and respond to changes (Muehlhauser& Bostrom,2014).However, they make a wrong claim because again their argument depends on human intelligence and if human beings can create this kind of intelligence,AI will not be able to go beyond human intelligence. Barrett and Baum (2016) explain why AI will not pose a risk:
While that intelligencecan store data and process it, human beings canunderstand how the smart devices can make such kind of action and they can take precautions before any problem occurs.That is, if people try to make these kinds of super intelligent devices, they can also try different scenarios with them and they can see whether they will be harmful or not. Human beings can protect themselves from machines that they have created (p.10).
Another thing why we should not be afraid of AI is it has no willpower. Willpower makes the difference between necessary and redundant information.In early 2016, Google got access to their AI, Tay, on twitter to see whether she can personalize her answers to users or not. They programmed her to learn from users.SinceTay had no willpower, users made it racist with their tweets (Hunt, 2016). This experiment showed that intelligence without the force of the will is nothing even in such a small area.
In conclusion, AI cannot outrival human intelligence and artificial intelligence and human intelligence should be together for the benefits of human beings. Whether smart devices can make differences on them or not, they cannot surpass human intelligence because humans will always be able to control their devices and they will always be able to produce knowledge and use it. Do not forget that machines are good at pattern matching but our ability to learn unlimited patterns means humans will always be smarter than artificial intelligence.