In the middle of the 20th century, both physicists and lyricists racked their brains over the problem of artificial intelligence: what will it be and what threatens humanity? At least, we now know the answer to the first question. An artificial intelligence is a program loaded onto a computer. She makes calculations, plays chess, makes the robot do somersaults. The second question is more complicated. Someone considers artificial intelligence to be a universal evil, programmed to destroy humanity, while someone, on the contrary, places great hopes on it, hoping with its help to solve a wide variety of problems. Scientific developments in recent years rather confirm the latter point of view. Machines with virtual minds perfectly replace their creator in many areas of activity and even in some places supplant him.
What is mind
However, not every program should be considered artificial intelligence. Falling short of this definition is a device that only performs calculations faster than a human. A supercomputer with no special skills is essentially an ultra-fast calculator. A program that cannot learn independently cannot be called highly intellectual. An uncreative approach to the task at hand, too, to put it mildly, does not indicate great intelligence.
The material shell in which the virtual brain is enclosed does not matter much. We can make anything: a tiny player, a quantum computer, a robot, a laser system, an airplane. The intelligence of a device is determined by the algorithm and information loaded into it. For example, at NRNU MEPhI, whose employees have kindly shared their views on artificial intelligence, are developing a security system for a smartphone that recognizes the owner by how he treats him.
Criticism of artificial intelligence
Speed, memory, self-learning, creativity - a device with these properties, no matter how it looks, will think practically like a person. Paradoxically, this comparison is not at all in favor of artificial intelligence. Because he begins to instill fear in us. God knows what thoughts will come to his processor if initiative is encouraged. He may want to harm us intentionally, make us slaves, or even destroy us. Serious scientists do not share these concerns.
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Surgeon robot performing surgery / Fotolia.
“Hollywood movies like The Terminator or The Matrix are pretty far from reality. At the moment, computing facilities are so dependent on a person that, even if they were able to destroy him, they could not continue to exist. Of course, one can assume that in the future robots will learn to independently extract minerals, build factories and provide themselves with energy, but I believe that this will not happen in this century. However, forecasting a particular area of science is a thankless task, since too much depends on funding,”comments Aleksey Samsonovich, professor at the Institute of Intelligent Cybernetic Systems, NRNU MEPhI.
Some thinkers, not without reason, predict that artificial intelligence will leave us completely without work. Robotization has already made a lot of professions unnecessary, for example, a typesetter or navigator, and will devalue many more. But as practice shows, the mechanization of labor gives rise to new professions in which the intellectual and creative abilities of people are revealed with renewed vigor. The more tasks we give to our virtual counterparts, the more time we will leave ourselves to do really important and complex things. For example, to predict breakdowns at large power generating stations, including nuclear ones.
The world's first robot police officer in Dubai, UAE / AFP 2017 / Giuseppe Cacace.
“The intelligent system we are creating on the basis of neural networks will be able to predict when a combination of certain factors will lead to a breakdown of one or another large station unit. The fact is that different parts of large mechanisms rarely fail one by one. Most often, an accident is caused by simultaneous, for example, wear of parts. A person is simply not capable of calculating and analyzing such a volume of data in order to understand when a malfunction will occur and what will become its catalyst,”says Valentin Klimov, Deputy Director of the Institute of Intelligent Cybernetic Research Nuclear University MEPhI.
The pace of development of artificial intelligence is both pleasing and frightening, bringing closer the time when we will have to answer ethical questions. Should we consider each smart program as a separate person, what rights and responsibilities should we give it, should we regulate its work? It is difficult to stop scientific progress, which means that we will have to share living space with artificial intelligence, and I want to believe that we will become friends.