What do you think is motivating us as a species to create AI robots? Clearly parts of our species are afraid enough to warrant PR in favor of AI robots before they exist. And yet, still members of our species are actively working to create AI robots while the rest of our species (at least the ones that know that some people are doing this) are tacitly supporting the creation of AI robots by allowing this research. I seriously wonder what motivates humanity to create and allow the creation of AI robots? Maybe we are just lonely talking to only our species and we want another intelligent species who can offer us a perspective outside of our own?
I have a hard time thinking of a thought more depressing than feeling lonely with a world of more than 7 billion.Maybe we are just lonely talking to only our species and we want another intelligent species who can offer us a perspective outside of our own?
Good point. That sentence made me laugh this morning. You are right and there are plenty of people in the world and so an individual need not feel lonely. I was referring more to how one can experience one's self not as an individual but as part of a species. A person can have a whole town or country full of people, but that individual could feel lonely within their social group or they could want to travel to meet someone from a different culture because they want is a fresh perspective. When a person experiences themselves as part of a species, then a specific type of desire for an outside of our species, alien perspective might be attractive for similar reasons-to get a fresh view or contradiction or confirmation of ideas or just to reassure us that we are not alone. There are many researchers currently working to create AI and each of them might have their own reasons to want to create AI: curiosity, scientific renown, wealth, to help humanity find new solutions, etc. But I question our actions as a species: why are we as a big group allowing, funding, and desiring the creation of AI robots?
The problem is communication, understanding each other and trust. Do this exercise: from those 7 billions discard the people who speak a language you don't understand, then discard the people who don't care about you, then discard the people who you don't care about, discard the people that interact daily with you but you don't trust, keep discarding until you are left with a list of people you will share all your secrets with. How long is that list? I will be surprised if it consists of more than 2 people, for most of us it is 0, we are not alone but we feel lonely. A machine will never betray us, it may fail and we can fix it but it doesn't have bad intentions like people do, we feel safer writing our feelings in a text file or in a notepad than telling about them to other people. And what if that text file or notepad could reply to us? A cold, non human reply that helps us feel less lonely sounds promising.
I dunno. That strikes me a bit on par with talking to your dog after a hard day of living. I know that companionship is not actually the end goal of AI or Robotics, but if it was, I think we'd be better off fighting the source of our problems than using technology as a band aid.
Some things are easier said than done, fighting the source of our problems is one of them (at least for me, shyness is a curse), band aid solutions can make us temporary feel better. Edit: I forgot to say I agree with you, it is not the end goal of AI. I just wanted to share my personal reasons for trying to have more accurate AI.
From what I have seen I still couldn't find anything that can be called "Artificial Intelligence", it feels like we are still in a very rough draft version of what we can call artificial intelligence. I haven't seen much progress in AI in the latest years, algorithms seem to be the same (or variations of them), the difference is that computers got faster and have more memory, this allowed impressive things such as brute forcing chess moves to beat the best player but I wouldn't call it "intelligent". Edit: a disclaimer, I haven't read very much about the machine that plays Go, as far as I know it can't use brute force to play the game but I don't know which algorithm it uses.