ROBOTS AND HUMANS

By this time, people who read my blog should be aware that I do not write about frivolous events, such as buying a brown suit, or a new car or that I met a friend I hadn’t seen in years in the mall. I look at the world around me and question how humans are evolving. I am not a big follower of science fiction yet in a way this article verges on that area. Considering the developments in human technology I consider this article to be of a very serious nature.

I do not have to make any of my readers aware that the most significant development technologically has been the advancement of the computer. Starting from simple adding machines to book-keeping systems which really were not computers but appeared so, computerization of all aspects of human ventures is an everyday fact. I was amazed recently when I learned if you carry specific types of communication devices with you, retailers can make contact in the part of the city in which you are, and offer you a particular product. How did they know you were interested in that particular product? Of course they follow Google or you had an apps about the product. Wikipedia is another interesting phenomenon. It is a multilingual encyclopedia that literally has the answers to questions about the world around them that most people have.

As surprised as you think I am with the effects of computerization I have saved the best or the worst, whichever way you look at it for the end. There is such a practice as “neuromarketing”. Scanning peoples brains to scientifically, understand what stimuli they respond to(and therefore how best to influence them as consumers). Not a very pleasant prospect for me. But even more frightening is the development of Artificial Intelligence or better known as AI .Hans Moravec, the renowned roboticist at Carnegie Mellon predicts that Robots will surpass human intelligence by 2030, will develop human-like consciousness, will be aware of the world and socially interact, will gain the the ability to replicate themselves and pace their own evolution.

Natural intelligence evolution starts from wormlike animals with a few hundred neurons occurring more than 570 million years ago. Very primitive fish that appeared 470 million years ago had about 100,000 neurons. One hundred million years later, amphibians with a few million neurons emerged from the swamps. One hundred and fifty million years later, the first mammals appeared and had brain capacities with several hundred million neurons. At the same time there were dinosaurs which eventually became extinct with several billion neurons. The first hominids of about 30 million years ago had brains of 20 billion neurons. Present humans have brains operating with approximately 100 billion neurons

Compare this to the artificial intelligence evolutionary track beginning with the first electromechanical computers built around 1940 which had a few hundred bits of telephone relay storage. By 1955 computers had acquired 100,000 bits of rotating magnetic memory, followed 10 years later with millions of bits. By the year 2000 a few personal computer owners configured their PCs with tens of billions of bits of RAM.

If one accepts the comparison of computer bits to neurons as described by Moravec, then the computer’s growth in evolution each decade is unreal compared to what it took Mother Nature to achieve every hundred million years. Moravec calculates that human engineering of AI is occurring at 10 million times the speed of natural evolution.

Intelligent human behavior occurs out of the interplay amoung the brain, the body and the world .Ideas, thoughts, concepts and reasoning are shaped by our perceptual system—our ability to perceive, move and interact with the world. It is the opinion of Moravec and Rodney Brooks( founder of iRobot Corp and Heartland Robotic Inc) that in order to achieve human-level intelligence, any AI system would develop the same way humans develop. And these scientists believe as the robots became more human-like they would evolve with their interaction with the environment. The idea that humans will compete with robotic entities according to the two scientists will leave humans at a disadvantage. Humans will be unable to match the rapid evolutionary jumps available to artificial beings.

Humans now have enough problems competing with each other, black against white, rich against poor, east against west, religion against religion. What a mess to throw in Humanoids in the mix. The only thing worse would be an invasion from another planet

I am not sure I accept at face value the future as outlined by Brooks and Moravec.