The Problem with AI

Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more prominent in our society. As each day passes, researchers and engineers are building bigger (well sort of) and better processors, which means that Apple iPhone that just came out a couple weeks ago is technically already outdated. These technological advances are bringing us closer and closer to a time where robots could walk among us and we would be unable to tell if they were one or not.  

First, let’s discuss Ex Machina. This film is a physical representation of what we read about the Turing Test in "The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive." The Turing Test is when judges have to decide by the written/typed responses whether or not someone/something is a human or an A.I. If the human is believed to be more human than the computer, they win the title of Most Human Human. Conversely, if the computer beats the human, they are given the mantle of Most Human Computer. As discussed with Dr. McGuffee in class on Monday, we have in fact seen in our lifetime a computer beat a human, though we knew full well that it was a computer to begin with (Watson on "Jeopardy!"). Now, could Watson fool Mr. Caleb Smith in Ex Machina like Kyoko and later Ava? Maybe if Watson had a body, face, and sexual attraction like Ava and Kyoko. Caleb points out the difference in how his test is more a face-to-face, while the original test is a more secretive affair. You can't see whether or not the thing on the other side is a human or a computer. Nathan, Ava and Kyoko's creator, says this in response: "We're way past that. If I hid Ava from you so you could just hear her voice, she would pass for human. The real test is to show you that she's a robot and then see if you still feel she has consciousness."  

Before I go on with anything more about Ex Machina, I want to discuss my chosen movie: I, Robot. In this film, the year is 2035 and the world, or at least the city of Chicago, is inhabited by not only humans, but robots as well. These robots however are here to help humans. They are built with laws that keep them from harming humans in anyway. It works, for the most part. We follow Detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) as he struggles to find a robot he doesn’t want to destroy. During his investigation, he comes across Sonny, a robot built to withstand the three laws. Sonny is highly intelligent, so much so that he can dream unlike the other robots. He can also understand human interaction and the choice between right and wrong. Though Sonny does not actually look like a human, like Kyoko and Ava, he is still very aware and conscious.  

Do we need these types of A.I. units though? I think it will be a very long time before we could pass a robot off as human in both linguistics and looks. Both have been done, just on separate occasions. We have human looking robots, but they don’t sound very human. They are still very mechanical sounding, too proper. But then we have robots with voices like that of Siri, or for the Android users Cortana. These voices were recorded, but are not spoken through a mouth when we hear them, only through a speaker. I believe there will come a time when these two factors will finally come together and we will have self-aware robots walking among us, but will they become like Ava and VIKI? Out to lock us away or to destroy us, because the one thing harming us is ourselves?