Artificial Intelligence - Can It Exist?

Artificial Intelligence (or AI as it will be referred to from now on) is becoming a hot philosophical issue with the advent of very powerful computing technologies. Even in pop culture, especially in the science fiction realm, it has always been, and continues to be a popular subject. But what exactly is AI? Succinctly, it is an intelligence that is traditionally thought to be non-biological, and it is usually in the form of some type of computer or robot. It can also be considered a subset of Artificial Life (A-life), because there is some intelligence associated, however small, with all life forms. Usually, however, people think of AI as being similar to human intelligence. In my belief, AI will never come that far because there is something special about the human brain and mind. This is not to say that AI will never reach any level of intelligence, or has not reached some level already. It could also be possible that computer AI will be totally unlike human intelligence. If it can solve complex mathematical or logical problems, it could still be considered intelligent. Thinking in general implies decision-making, learning, reasoning, memory, language understanding, conscious sensations, beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, creativity, and emotions. With AI, however, I do believe it is possible to have a subset of the list just mentioned, or even one item for AI to be a reality.

Digital computers have only been around for around 50 or so years. In that short period of time computers has come a long way in terms being more powerful and ubiquitous. Alan Turing was involved near the beginning of the digital computing revolution. Turing's Test, his idea of testing for AI is probably one of the best known in the field of AI. The test revolves around the question if a computer can imitate the thinking processes of people. It revolves around three entities, one being a human interrogator, and two other entities, one being another human, and the other a machine/computer who are then interrogated. The test is to see if the interrogator can accurately tell who the real person is and who is the machine in a limited period of time (Turing suggests five minutes in his essay[1]). The entities are separated and only allowed to communicate by using a terminal where typed words appear on the interrogator's screen. It should be noted that Turing does not think people should be asking whether or not computers can actually think, but rather by imitating thought so well, that people come to believe the machine is actually thinking. This idea of imitation of thought does not lead itself well with respect to AI being on par with human intelligence. By its meaning, imitation is not the real thing. The outward appearance of the output given by such an imitating computer may look like it is really thinking, but in reality it may not. At the present putting restrictions on the Turing Test really doesn't help to promote all of the ideas associated with thinking. In an unrestricted Test, no computer yet has been able to pass it. This is why the notion of strong human-like AI is improbable to say the very least. One example to show this is chess. Chess has traditionally been thought of as a thinking person's game. However, with the defeat of Kasparov by Deep Blue in May of 1997,[2] the question of computer intelligence reached the foreground once again. This defeat of a human by a computer is nothing new though. Computers have been able to beat human players at the game of checkers and other of similar or lesser complexity (such as Tic-Tac-Toe) for quite a few decades now. Should the game of chess be considered special when compared to checkers, only on the basis of it having more complexity? When inspected more closely, Deep Blue is basically doing the same thing it would do if were playing a game of checkers. It is looking ahead many more steps humanly possible, based on the current state of the chess board, and then making a decision based on the expected value of the moves it makes. Even with chess programs on personal computers, this is the basic method employed, although to a much lesser degree because of the personal computer’s relative power. If following a programmed series of rules implies some degree of intelligence, then Deep Blue could be considered to have some essence of AI. However, this idea can be brought down to a simpler level of having a basic calculator having AI because it follows some rules in order to reach a mathematical solution to a problem based on what the inputs to the problem were. Again this could be abstracted to a mechanical device which does arithmetic. All these things from the mechanical math device to Deep Blue in some of or the other use the same method of reaching their answers - rule-based algorithms, but they don’t show human-like intelligence. They show their own brand of intelligence based on the properties of computes.

Does a wealth of information and a set of rules, which uses this information, imply intelligence? I would have to say yes. But as it said in John Searle's essay,[3] there is no intention behind all this information processing. What intention means is an understanding by the computer of what it is actually doing and why. But does even that mean that there is no intelligence in the machine whatsoever? No. Emulation of thinking behavior may have enough functionality in order to call it real AI. Then there must be another realm of AI that doesn't require the use of human-like intelligence for AI to be present. There is a different path that AI can take. That other path is with alien AI, as opposed to human AI (i.e., approximating human-like intelligence). Alien AI is where the computer scientist or engineer has free reign over what way he/she wishes to take in order to bring about AI. Take again the example of Deep Blue. The computer is able to beat the best human player in the world at the game of chess by taking advantage of its inherent advantages of being able to look ahead further ahead than a human. It may be crude and not the way a human plays chess, but it still works.

One other approach to alien AI is to build very simple machines that can display simple intelligence. One doesn't have to begin designing intelligent machines that are too complex to handle. One of the people pioneering this field of research is Mark Tilden, and his company BEAM Robotics[4] (http://sst.lanl.gov/robot/). These robots are fairly simple creations. BEAM Robotics' philosophy is to start with a simple design and "evolve" it over time. The surprising aspect about these robots is that they contain no microprocessors. In the microprocessor's place is a patented amalgamation of transistors. They act as a simple neural net or the phrase, coined by Tilden, a "nervous net". This is a radical departure from traditional robot design because of this apparent lack of a brain. One would think them grossly unintelligent. This turns out to be quite the contrary. They have been shown to display lifelike behavior on the order of insects (physically, they also look like mechanical insects) in searching for energy for their solar cells, and defending it the area where the sunlight is. They even display learning and memory traits. It was explained by Brosl Hassalacher in the Reader's Digest article that, "according to the theory of chaotic systems, the lifelike adaptive behavior of his robots was an "emergent property" of the processes within the circuitry of the machines." Even with these simple machines there is some level of intrinsic intelligence that is shown. Thus, in their own way, they have AI.

Expert systems also show intelligent behavior. An example could be a medical expert system for determining blood disorders. They know of a specialized world that only contains information necessary to a particular domain. Rules based on this information allow for diagnosing a particular disorder and what properties makes the expert system given this diagnosis based on the input given. They also can store in memory what conditions in the past have led to right and wrong determinations, and thus when presented again with the same input are able to avoid making the same mistake twice.

Personification of the machine also comes into play with imitating intelligent behavior. Even the psychotherapist program Eliza,[5] has shown that people attach even more thought aspects to the program than were actually there. This may have something to do with our pop culture. Science fiction has for a long time shown people that there can be intelligent machines, whether they are good, bad, or indifferent. Even with the introduction of the first digital computers into society, they had coined the term, electronic brain, for them. With this idea fairly entrenched in our culture, it is very understandable why this personification occurs. It also has the implied meaning, that if people think that a machine shows some level of intelligence, why not other intelligent aspects? This layman's logic can also be shown in computer games, where enemies the player is trying to avoid or attack in the virtual world of the game. The player feels that the enemies "know" where he is and how to go about hindering the player's progress. This knowledge possessed by the computer game is fairly simple, but it has a striking effect on the player. Personification of machines takes many forms. A computer could be said it decided to do something because it wanted or needed to (decision-making). It remembered some attributes from the past and learned to recognize similar attributes in another entity (memory, learning), it was able to understand spoken language and printout what was being said (language comprehension). Needless to say these have some emotional or conscious attachment to the words that we place upon them. However, it is this emotional attachment to these words that cause some people some difficulty with accepting AI, because some would argue that those words represent only our thinking actions as human beings. The counter argument to this would be that we do personify complex emotions on animals as well when in reality they don’t, so attaching those same feelings to a machine is no different.

This essay has so far discussed, what would normally be deemed the more “logical” parts of intelligence, such as problem solving and decision making. However, the question for accepting AI is whether these logical aspects of intelligence can be totally separate from the more non-logical characteristics such as emotions, hopes, desires, consciousness, etc and still consider the computer to have some intelligence. I believe they can. Just because someone or something “knows” that 2+2=4, doesn’t imply that they desire that it be true, or love it or hate it for being so.

Another question that arises is that can computers or machines be made or programmed in such a way so that they can experience these non-logical aspects of intelligence. This is where is gets really difficult to find a satisfactory answer. Arguing from the standpoint of imitation, one could say that this was possible because if one had a large enough database, and conditions which, when satisfied triggered an appropriate response would appear to people as being acceptable. This question also implies that we have or will have a handle on “what makes us tick”. I would say that by the sheer complexity of the human brain/mind (mind being the definition from a dualist position, or if viewed from a non-dualist position, mind meaning the psychological make-up of people), that we may never totally understand our inner workings. A thing can be programmed to say it feels sad at seeing something die, but does it necessarily follow that it really feels the pain of death in the same way we do? I think not. One future possibility might be that we could approximate very closely the “emotions” that a lower biological life form has. A less complex animal knows when it is in harm’s way and knows to avoid it. That could be akin to a mobile robot avoiding a lava pit because it knows that it could not continue to function if it fell into the pit. This also brings up responsibilities for teaching or programming a computer or robot the proper moral values. Pop culture has exposed possible problems with creating an AI that has no morality associated with it and then it becomes a killing machine because it has deemed human life expendable or useless.

When all is said and done, AI is a reality and machines can think in their own way, but it is based on the truly logical areas that define intelligent behavior. With the ever increasing speed at which computer technology is advancing, we shall see a marked improvement in these areas. However, as for the more non-logical domains, they will in my opinion be impossible for us to truly implement in reality, but with computers’ imitative powers increasing, we may have the next best thing.



[1]A. M. Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Mind, vol 59, no. 236 (1950), pp. 43-436, 442 rpt. in Philosophical Alternatives, ed. Ken Warmbrōd, Department of Philosophy, University of Manitoba (1997), p. 193. [2]IBM, Kasparov vs. Deep Blue: The Rematch, 1997 (Accessed March 29, 1998). [3]John Searle, “Minds, Brains and Programs,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences vol. 3 (1980), pp. 417-424 rpt. in Philosophical Alternatives, ed. Ken Warmbrōd, Department of Philosophy, University of Manitoba (1997), pp. 212-223. [4]Bennett Schaub, “Amazing Robots of the ‘Mad Scientist’,” Equinox (November/December ‘96) rpt. in Reader’s Digest, April 1998 issue, pp. 57-61. [5]David Tanaka, “From the Editor,” The Computer Paper, Prairie Edition - March ‘98, p. 6.