Has AI made the world a better place?

Question

Hey, Do you think AI (Artificial Intelligence) has made the world a better place? ***Please reference sources of information***

Thanks
Matt

Answer 1

YES
I would say that its obvious but many people have no idea of how many places AI has been already included into things. Its part of vending machines, streetlights, autopilots on planes, etc. Fuel injection systems in our cars use learning algorithms. Jet turbines are designed using genetic algorithms. Every cell phone call and e-mail is routed using artificial intelligence. It helps in medical diagnostics, routing traffic of all types (plane, ship, car, train), its a large factor in all of the work being done in better predicting natural (and man-made) disasters.

Its interesting that so many people think that AI hasnt happened yet.
Quoted from http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/aieffect.html
Researchers joked that AI stood for 'almost implemented'. AI research projects that worked well enough to make it on to the market, such as speech recognition, language translation, decision-support software, landing planes, reading hand-written postcards to sort mail, are suddenly no longer AI.
[/quote]

Usually people confuse AI (artificial intelligence) with AH (artifically human). AI is done all the time. The interesting thing about AH is that the closest we tend to get involves removing some of the intelligence and replacing it with randoms. In games particularly that shows up as a more difficult opponent than the "point from A to B is a straight line" AI opponent.

Answer 2

Artificial intelligence is still just a dream. There is a huge difference between what computers do now and intelligence! Computation of data isn't equivalent to intelligence... This equivalence constitutes a very narrow view of what is the intellect.

Considering that... I'll answer what I think you are really asking. Computers have made massive difference in humanity. We would not number approximately 6.7 billion strong if it was not for computers. They make fast, efficient calculations that make production, trade, and distribution expand enough to support such growth. They also help in the development of health sciences (in terms of drugs chemistry development, data crunching and diagnostics) that helps keep many alive. As recently as 1950s humanity numbered at around 2 billion... A 4.7billion population growth in approximately 50 years...! Impressed!?

PS: Your question is funny, because up to now many still doubt intelligence exists here on earth at all... LOL !!!

Answer 3

AI as a general discipline is somewhat dehumanizing in its methods and presumptions. Some of its more "transhumanist" types have proclaimed various rosy scenarios in which "Homo cyborg" supplants present humanity.

However, there are various ramifications, some little appreciated, such as the loss of certain important human aspects in e.g. babies not developing in utero.

A simple example is the critical first 45 Minutes of post-partum contact for the child. If it is able to sustain gaze with its mother or other important care-giver during this time, its consciousness as measured on mri etc. remains at a high level. If not, its consciousness "shuts down" for several months, before regaining its initial birth level. There are even more important and less-reducible/less measurable qualities which are lost for years when an infant is developing outside the mother's uterus.

Similar problems exist for e.g. cognitive enhancement; like giving primitive man an atomic weapon, such as happened in the 1940s, with no concommitant increase in moral kindness, technology simply increases the oops factor. Nano-technology, bioengineering, information command and control, and many other knowledge-is-power technologies are in effect handing primitive people very new and more powerful weaponry.

Nigel Cameron is one person who worries about e.g. placing intelligence-enhancing/genetic modification technology on the market. The "superman" is not necessarily the "better man."

Consider reading Mark Prophet's heuristic "The Soulless One," as it raises most of the issues concerning a more mechanized, less moral society arising per technological manipulation and conditioning.

Bill Joy's "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," published in "Wired," is a good cautionary overview.

In fine, the benefits are like the benefits of splitting the atom, of popular television, etc.--many drawbacks, mostly due to human primitive amorality combining with non-moral scientific development. A dangerous mixture, historically. A quote by Ray Kurzweil (from his "Promise and Peril" article) gives a superficial bromidal summary: "People often go through three states in examining the impact of future technology: Awe and wonderment at its potential to overcome age old problems, then a sense of dread at a new set of grave dangers that accompany these new technologies, followed, finally and hopefully, by the realisation that the only viable and responsible path is to set a careful course that can realise the promise while managing the peril." This is superficial hope, in that mankind historically has found e.g. atomic weapons nearly unmanagable, plastics' pollution serious and unmanaged, errors re applying medical technology the second or third leading cause of human death, the automobile to have disrupted family, finance, environment, and caused multiple thousands of deaths yearly in the U.S. alone, television to have wasted billions of hours, led to addictive behavior (it is well-documented but little-publicized that tv places the brain in a dependent, addictive state, with near-immediate depression), and the list continues. With the avowedly transhuman superpowers AI and other such techne are bringing to the scene, there is every reason to believe Kurzweil's sanguine optimism is c-ck-eyed, false, in that humans have never managed their technology to the degree Ray Kurzweil envisions.

O. M. Aivahnov's "Hope for the World: Spiritual Galvanoplasty," takes a worthwhile approach somewhat beyond Kurzweil's, but it is mostly learnable by the few, I believe.

regards,

j.

Answer 4

no-this is my personal opinion. i think the whole AI revolution has made us dependent on computers for everything! we as people(unless you live in an under developed country) exercise less because we have cars instead of horses or having to walk everywhere we need to go. everybody owns cell phones, we no longer rely on the "snail mail" we have e-mail! and can you actually imagine a "smart" computer, one that will evolve with you?? that is a terrifying thought! just imagine it-your computer will know everything about you, your strengths/weaknesses and will eventually get to a point will it will realize it doesn't need you to survive and try to take over!! scary thought!!!

Answer 5

I think yes with the sophistication in robotics, having the advantage of shorter processing time but the ultimate decision should still rests on humans.

Answer 6

What A.I., I have no freakin' A.I. and I haven't seen any either. Could it make the world a better place? Sure, if everyone could have one.

Answer 7

Come on... you're trying to get us to do your term paper... aren't you?