Curiosity has always eluded man. This has led to many inventions and discoveries. One of the finest examples of man’s inventions is computer. Automatically a picture comes to our mind. They are able to do huge computations, repetitive and boring jobs that took us long time. Exactly what the computer provides is not the ability to be rigid or unthinking. But rather to behave conditionally; sometimes this way, sometimes that, as appropriate. This means applying knowledge to action. Believe it or not, even here, attitude matters the most. We ask these machines to do the job that we already know and do. But we want them to do faster and more accurately.
The irony is we humans are trying to produce intelligence through artificial ways. Its just the science of producing machines (making machines) that have intelligence and a bit of common sense. It’s about how you program a system so that it behaves like humans. They can think, process information, can take decisions and act accordingly. Yes, we prefer illusions to reality.
History could be associated with early age Egyptians but this got its formal name ‘Artificial Intelligence’ at Dartmouth Conference, Hanover, New Hampshire in 1956 under the guidance of John McCarthy. And the world came to know about the level of human thinking. Many things followed. LISP or list processing, the language used for AI was developed by John McCarthy in 1958. In 1970, world got its first expert system in the field of medical sciences for detecting blood infections, MYCIN. Prolog or programming in logic, one of the AI’s main languages was developed by Japanese in 1972. One big thing that really amazed world happened in 1991 when a human chess master was defeated by a computer.
And rest they say is history…
There are various fields where it has found a good response. The fields include:
* Game playing – Program a system for playing games like chess.
* Expert Systems – Create a knowledge base, help systems to take decisions based on their experience (knowledge in base).
* Human Sensory Systems – Emulate human senses of voice and vision.
* Neural networks – Attempt to reproduce connections (neurons) that exist in human brain and thus simulate intelligence.
* Robotics – A popular field. Program a system in such a way that it is able to see, understand and react to the external stimuli.
The ongoing success of adding intelligence to machines so that we fail to distinguish whether it’s a machine or a human being seems assured. However, the goal to duplicate human intelligence or the idea to create a clone of humans in intelligence is a bit controversial. We are successful in creating robots (machines) that are able to come up with answers in definite situations. But still not able to duplicate our daily circumstances. We face uncertain situations. To adjust to these, we require thinking and common sense. Thinking is a set of mental processes that go on in an unconscious mind. We do that deliberately also. Question still remains. If we are able to add this thinking in a deliberate way, can we ever achieve that higher level of sub – consciousness?
Yes, sometimes things should be left aside for time to answer. So can a computer be intelligent, think, understand and act at the same time, should not be questioned now?
Sujata S
