Artificial Intelligence, Essay Example

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is generally identified as the discipline focused on investigating how to make computers perform tasks that involve intelligence when carried out by human beings. Through its short modern history AI has had succeed to particular extent, mostly in restricted, or basic, areas. There has been a diversity of AI programs, which have effected other technological and scientific innovations. Nevertheless, when five decades after the foundation of AI have passed, the science has unfortunately showed itself as one having achieved insufficiently significant development, and initial optimism regarding the achievement of intelligence of human level has turned into an understanding of the deepness and complexity of the set mission. Progress continued to be made however.

The history of artificial intelligence commenced in the remote past; its origins can be found as early as in ancient Egypt. There have always existed legends, tales and stories of artificial life forms provided with awareness or intelligence by their creators. The notion of a “thinking machine” can be traced back to 2500 B.C., when the Egyptians turned to “talking” statues for spiritual guidance. Beginning with Aristotle, philosophers, one by one, have endeavored to explain and illustrate the course of action of human thinking as the automatic operation involving symbols. This ideas eventually resulted in the creation of the digital computer controlled by an electronic program in the 1940s, a device generated from the conceptual essence of mathematical analysis. This machine and the notions behind it encouraged a number of scientists to start seriously pondering and working on the prospect of constructing a computerized brain. With the invention of the electronic computer in 1941, the tools finally became accessible to produce machine intelligence.

Artificial intelligence as a field of research was brought into being at a conference taking place on the grounds of Dartmouth College in the summer of 1956. Those present at the conference had become the selected few leaders of AI studies for years to come. Since then Artificial Intelligence as an area of scientific research has been developing due to the theories and laws elaborated by its devoted examiners. However, with time it became apparent that they had significantly undervalued the complexity of the undertaking. In 1973 the ongoing pressure from congress, and the additional disapproval of Sir James Lighthill, British applied mathematician, famous for his revolutionary work in the field of aeroacoustics, eventually resulted into the U.S. and British Governments stopping to fund subsidiary research of AI. Soon after that, however, in 1980 an imaginative initiative by the Japanese Government stimulated governments and business to supply AI with millions of dollars. At the end of 80s the financiers once again became disappointed and withdraw funding. In fact, the entire history of AI development is a cycle of rise and fall, and nowadays the situation is still unstable.

“Mainstream thinking in psychology regards human intelligence not as a single ability or cognitive process but rather as an array of separate components. Research in AI has focused chiefly on the following components of intelligence: learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and language-understanding” (Copeland). Artificial Intelligence can be characterized as an imitation of human intelligence methods by machines, particularly computer programs. This field has always been the one typified by intricate research in laboratory environment setting and only lately has become related to technology in terms of commercial purposes. There have always been numerous debates regarding the set of ideas that lie at the core of Artificial Intelligence and its place in the modern reality. Nowadays, when utilizing Internet and PC is as common as watching TV, when we no longer realize our daily routine without these once unbelievably fantastic and inaccessible technological assets, people start asking the question “What is next?

There are some essential issues about AI that are still to be analyzed. In addition to a number of the tricky technical problems concerning this field, which need to be resolved, there are as well a number of moral and ethical issues that should in no way be overlooked. Some of such dilemmas are: Is it good or bad that once intelligent machines will become a considerable component of our existence? Should we construct machines endowed with knowledge and understanding of own self? If being able to construct human-intelligent machines, will we still be able to control them and how will we possibly do that? Despite mentioned moral dilemmas, the processes of Artificial Intelligence development are primarily slow because of numerous technological hurdles it faces, not because humanity resists the very progression. Researchers’ supreme goal is to produce machines that would truly be able to imitate the human brain activities, so that it could thinks, react and interact in a way human beings actually do. Whether such a task can or cannot be really performed remains an issue of passionate debates. However, “one thing is becoming very clear: the hardware is starting to catch up to us. If you take all of today’s computers and sum them together you will end up with the equivalent intellectual power of 1x1017x flops/sec, which is what one human brain is capable of processing.” Significantly, computer power increases and becomes faster as the amount of its intellectual capabilities increases, which means computers are catching up quickly. Thus, “at the current rate, it will be approximately 2021 when computers will have the equivalent processing power of all humans on this planet combined.” (Moy)

These days there are already some fantastic, exciting and significant functions of AI that can endow humanity with a number of means designed for us to deal with our routine activities while working and at leisure. For instance, there are some programs being developed that will allow your stock portfolio to automatically alter your market position and to carry out profitable trades; will make your car do your driving for you; will provide you with robots that will deal with all the possible types of housework (cleaning, yard work, cooking, etc); will automatically order your groceries depending only on learned preferences and patterns in purchasing. These are just a small number of many AI functions that these days already are or in the approaching future will be presented to us. The list of possible incredible procedures and devices is still to grow. Of course, all of these are being currently worked on in different levels of testing with various degrees of success. (Moy)

These days, there are some actual tools of the AI that are utilized in order to carry out numerous smart computerization processes. These are Neural Network(s), Mobile Agent System(s), Genetic Algorithms, and Fuzzy Logic. A Neural Network is an AI tool which reproduces network or circuit of interconnecting artificial neurons, and thus imitates the qualities of biological neurons. Neural networks are modeled to distinguish order in data and calculate an output from a specified information. Mobile Agent System is normally described as a composition of computer software and data that can travel from one computer to another and carry out some sort of useful implementations on the user’s behalf (on the destination computer). You can utilize agents to examine the Internet and to search for some specific information. Genetic Algorithm is a search method used in computing to discover accurate or fairly accurate solutions to optimization and search difficulties. It draws its behavior from a simile of particular mechanisms of evolution in nature.

Artificial Intelligence is believed to once become a significant power in our technological development. In fact, AI experts point out that it already spread through our lives. “Fuel injection systems in our cars use learning algorithms. Jet turbines are designed using genetic algorithms, which are both examples of AI,” says Dr Rodney Brooks, the director of MIT’s artificial intelligence laboratory. “We have hundreds of examples of what I call narrow AI, which is behavior that used to require an intelligent adult but that can now be done by a computer,” Mr Kurzweil says. “It is narrow because it is within a specific domain, but the actual narrowness is gradually getting a bit broader,” he adds. (Predicting AI’s Future)

Development in AI is continuing, in spite of the cyclical increase and collapse of its good reputation in the eyes of government bureaucrats and business enterprise capitalists. Problems that had seemed impossible in 1970s have been resolved and the resolutions are now employed actively in successful commercial products. The latest advances that scientists have gained in the field of Artificial Intelligence research are likely to develop into a significant aspect of our future existence. We can anticipate the technologies which used to be naturally held in reserve for compound laboratory studies to turn out to be a part of the technologies that are incorporated into our daily routine. Currently, there are already some remarkable AI tools that are actively utilized, which are able to make our routine responsibilities and job activities more trouble-free and efficient. Nevertheless, no machine has yet been constructed with a human level of intelligence, despite the hopeful prophecies of the primary generation of AI researchers. “We can only see a short distance ahead,” admitted Alan Turing, in a famous 1950 paper that catalyzed the modern search for machines that think. “But,” he added, “we can see much that must be done.” (Turing 460)

Works Cited

Copeland, Jack. What Is Artificial Intelligence? May 2000. 4 Dec. 2009. <http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/pages/Reference%20Articles/What%20is%20AI.html>.

Moy, Chris H. Insider Reports. Artificial Intelligence, Today and Tomorrow. 4 Dec. 2009. <http://www.insiderreports.com/storypage.asp?storyID=20001623&ChanID=WB>.

“Predicting AI’s Future.” BBC News. 21 Sept. 2001. 4 Dec. 2009. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2001/artificial_intelligence/1555742.stm>.

Turing, Alan. “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, Mind LIX 236 (October 1950): 460.