The media, Wall Street gurus, and us plebeian folks are all atwitter about A1 (Artificial Intelligence). What is it? Where is it? Will it take away our jobs? Will it make our lives better or will it terrorize our lives?
I’ll define AI as any computer coded algorithm that can access stored or new information and use it to make decisions and formulate answers to questions. In a primitive form, it’s been around for quite a while. I recall learning decades ago that an algorithm was in use to control the floor location of elevator cars such that an idle car would locate on the floor where it was most likely to be of use.
We should also recall a computer program called “Deep Blue” sponsored by IBM which was created to play chess. Deep Blue could take note of the location of all the chess pieces on the board and consider all possible moves and look ahead to the likely consequences to arrive at a well-considered move. In its most refined version, it managed to defeat world champion Gary Kasparov in 1997. The most recent examples using AI for positive purposes is self-driving cars. They have exhibited the incredible ability to make some of the same mistakes humans do.
Computers are very good at doing dumb things very fast. By using trial and error, they can converge on solutions to complex mathematical problems with simultaneous equations that would stump human intelligence seeking a closed form solution using pencil and paper. A meaningful example of AI’s critical limitation was in the news recently.
Every year there is an international math competition for high school students called “The International Mathematical Olympics” where students compete by attempting to solve challenging math problems. An effort was made to see how AI would do as a competitor with the students. There were some problems in which AI really starred, but there were some where it fell flat. The problems it failed on were ones of a sort that it could not find in its data search and thus required creativity in devising a new approach.
AI can and certainly will be used for very positive applications that improve our lives. As an example, imagine how nice it would be if all the traffic lights in a congested city were intelligently controlled to optimize the flow of traffic by adapting to real-time conditions. It also already is and will continue to be used for more nefarious purposes. It can fabricate video and audio clips of real people doing and saying things they never did. There are multitudes of bogus AI-generated scientific studies and resultant publications that have been flagged and retracted.
We can expect the future to bring more of the good productive uses as well as the nefarious ones. How it affects our lives depends on us. We should enjoy and appreciate the good labor-saving applications. The negative applications will take the form of disinformation and deception. It’s imperative that we confront this with disciplined critical thinking. Artificial intelligence should supplement human intelligence, not replace it. We’ve always dealt with human crack pots on the public square and in social media. Now we’ll experience artificial ones that we should deal with in the same way.
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