January 7, 2006

The Computing Machine and Artificial Intelligence
by Al Snowball

My forty plus years in the field of information systems has allowed me to witness, at close hand, the revolution in the application of computers to the solving of business, government, and scientific problems.  One of the long term goals of those professional in the field has been the development of artificial intelligence.  Originally that meant development of a system that could be indistinguishable from a human (The Turing Model where the machine could pass the blind test).  This goal has changed over time as our understanding of the nature of information and its organization has evolved.

Consider this: man is a tool maker. This is one of the key biological factor that distinguish us from all other life forms.  Language is just one of those tools that facilitates our ability to express our thought to each other.  Are we unique with language?  The jury is still out on this; dolphins, chimpanzees, orangutans, and possibly other animals may have this ability.  Even if other animals have language, are they sentient, are they self-aware and is this a true measure of intelligence?  Since science cannot agree on what constitutes intelligence, it seems presumptuous of us to assume that we can somehow imbue a binary electronic machine with this ability, al la Alan Turing.  Is it just neural programming or is it also structure of the hardware? I suspect that true human intelligence is both hardware (brain structure) and software, (exposure and experience). 

Getting back to the idea of the tool maker, man continues to expand his abilities using the technologies he has discovered.  The computer is the ultimate tool; it extends the mind and allows us to solve problems faster and with more information than ever before.  We have learned to organize information structures to provide views of the information in ways we never dreamed possible and to link these information systems together in network that allow for ever expanding views.  With expert systems, fuzzy logic and neural networking, and the ever expanding internet web with semantic XML applications I believe that we have already entered and age of artificial intelligence, but it is not the Alan Turing model.  I’m not sure that we will ever achieve that and I’m not sure why we would want to today.  If the Turing model is ever achieved I think that will be at least another twenty or thirty years in the future.  We can already do HAL without having to deal with erratic personalities and smart-alecky retorts.  As we invent more software tools to aid us in our search for intelligent solutions to all of man questions the future looks very exciting to me. 

Micro-miniaturization to the molecular level will give rise to new hardware platforms for medical applications that could revolutionize the way we fight disease and genetic failures.  The same technology may also revolutionize communications between humans and also between humans and machines.  Think what it will be like to project a thought problem to a high speed personal information research node that can respond at thought speeds.  No waiting for answers.  This is the nano-technology that is now being researched.

The Computing Machine and Artificial Intelligence
by Al Snowball

GP