{"id":3821,"date":"2019-09-18T10:39:08","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T08:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/junq.info\/?p=3821"},"modified":"2019-09-19T11:27:52","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T09:27:52","slug":"some-thoughts-on-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/junq.info\/?p=3821","title":{"rendered":"Some thoughts on artificial intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n Anton Bogomolov[1]<\/a>\n is a data scientist with PhD in Physics, currently working in IoT \nbranch. He is passionate for artificial intelligence with ten years of \nexperience in automated data analysis and machine learning.

[1]<\/a>abogomolov86@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Anton Bogomolov
<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: The everlasting technological progress is aimed\nto fulfill many needs of humans: most of them are physical, informational and\ncommercial. In particular, robots were created to perform tasks that were too\ndangerous for humans or that humans could not or did not want to do. But what\ndo we need intelligent machines for and what is implied by \u201cArtificial\nIntelligence\u201d (AI)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Bogomolov<\/strong>: The answer was already said \u2013 we\nneed AI to make our life simpler, i.e. to simplify some routine work that\nhumans have to do. Generally, we are heading towards automation, and in the\nideal case, we want to automize everything, every kind of work. So far, the\nprocesses we are capable of automizing have been prioritized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, what is understood by the term \u201cAI\u201d? Over the course of\nthis interview we will go deeper in the discussion, so let\u2019s start with a\nfairly broad definition: AI is something that is able to accomplish certain\ntasks with the help of self-learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: Does it imply that AI is not meant to create\nanything, like art or music?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Bogomolov<\/strong>: There is a number of definitions of\nAI. Indeed, the term \u201cintelligence\u201d implies that it can do creative work as\nwell. It is not a simple calculator. You don\u2019t just tell it what you want it to\ncalculate, and then it does exactly what has been asked. It does something more\ncomplicated and, thus, it also involves some learning experience. In this\ncontext, the creative work does not necessarily mean being an artist or a\nmusician, or a composer. A chatbot, as an example of an AI feature, is also a kind\nof creative work, because it is required to react accordingly or ask\nappropriate questions, in other words to be engaged into a conversation as a\nhuman would be i.e. express creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generally, yes, AI can generate art. For example, \u201cDeep\nDream\u201d1 was popular a few years\nback. This algorithm uses AI to generate the dream-like appearance of the\nuploaded images. Another one is \u201cNeural style transfer\u201d2 which allows one to compose an image in the\nstyle of another image. Should one ever want to paint like Van Gogh or Picasso,\nthis can be easily done, using this algorithm. There is also AI-composed music\nalready creeping into the background of games, film, and media. With AI it is\nnow possible to create music in different genres just at the push of a button.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: In the news or podcasts, the term \u201cmachine\nlearning\u201d often seems to come together with AI. What is, simply put, machine\nlearning and how does it relate to AI?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Bogomolov<\/strong>: As I mentioned before there are many\ndefinitions of AI. In simple words, AI is a broader term than the machine\nlearning (ML), i.e. AI includes ML. Being sort of an advanced algorithm, AI\nachieves specific goals by means of ML, at the same time it is able to adapt to\nits environment, just like humans. ML is also an algorithm, but a simpler one,\nwith the key feature \u2013 the ability to learn (thus the name). It is not meant to\nachieve a global goal, its goal is to eventually enable programs to\nautomatically improve through experience, without the programmer having to\nchange the code. ML relies on working with data sets, that one needs to input\nfirst. It then examines and analyses the data to find common patterns, so that\neventually it becomes possible to make experience-driven predictions or\ndecisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: So what it means is that AI does not exist\nwithout ML?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Bogomolov<\/strong>: Right. Machine learning is a subset\nof AI, more like a tool to achieve AI. One example might be the first chatbots\nfrom the 90s. They had hardcoded \u201cintelligence\u201d, i.e hardcoded answers to\npossible questions. If such bot sees certain keywords it outputs accordingly\nrelevant keywords. These did not have machine learning. But the intelligence of\nthese was doubtful since the algorithm did not adapt. And as we discussed\npreviously the key asset of AI is the ability to adapt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: Since we are on this page, how can one tell the\ndifference between the AI system and a more \u201cconventional\u201d program?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Bogomolov<\/strong>: There are \u201cintelligence\u201d tests for\nAI, among which the most renown one is the Turing Test.3 But this is more to test whether or not a\nsystem is capable of thinking like a human being. However, no AI technology\ntoday has passed the Turing test, i.e. that has shown to be convincingly\nintelligent and able to think. So, this is the main goal of this AI branch – we\nwant to create a machine that will be indistinguishable from a human, in\nparticular, that will be self-aware and act somewhat mindfully. In the end,\nsuch a machine will be able to pass the Turing test. Once again, so far, they\ndo not exist. Self-awareness tuned out to be tough to realize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, back to what was asked. I believe, no one is interested\nin differentiating AI from a mindless linear algorithm. Because as long as the\ndesired goal is achieved no one cares what type of algorithm was used for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: AI is no longer a futuristic concept, as some\nmay naively think. Can you name some examples where is AI being used already?\nAre there any AI applications used in the everyday life of ordinary people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Bogomolov<\/strong>: The most straightforward example is\nour smartphones. The more recent ones can recognize the owner\u2019s face. This is\nknown to use neural networks. Also, in smartphones, there is Google assistant.\nSpoken inquiries are transferred to a server where neural network-based\nalgorithms convert them to text, and which is then processed to deliver the\nrelevant information. These are the simplest examples. We all watch Youtube\nwhere based on one\u2019s watch history the system suggests what else one might be\ninterested in. These AI-based recommendation engines now seem to know us to an\nuncanny degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we now go further from everyday life, I would say AI is\nused pretty much in every field. In finance \u2013 there are already automatic\ntrading robots. Some use AI for analysing financial markets to generate\nprofitable trading strategies or make market predictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Autonomous driving has become very popular recently. There\nare even toys for children that make use of a variety of AI and ML\ntechnologies, including voice and image recognition, to identify the child and\nother people around, based on their voices and appearance. This all is owing to\nthe computation power we currently have, which has advanced in the last years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI has found its application in medicine as well. As AI\ndemonstrated remarkable progress in image-recognition tasks it is now widely\nused in medical radiology and computer tomography. One example is that there\nare neural networks that are trained to analyze tumours and do it as well as\nthe top-class specialists in the field. Just as radiologists are trained to\nidentify abnormalities based on changes in imaging intensities or the\nappearance of unusual patterns, AI can automatically find these features, and\nmany others, based on its experience from the previous radiographic images,\ncoupled with data on clinical outcomes. This also yields a more quantitative\noutcome, while radiologists perform only a quantitative assessment.4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: As AI develops further is it going to make\nhuman jobs obsolete? And what will people be doing if there is nothing else to\ndo?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Bogomolov<\/strong>: Ideally, this is what we aim for –\nto have everything automized. But this can be achieved, in my opinion, only\nwhen so-called artificial general intelligence is realized. This will be a\nmachine capable of experiencing consciousness and think autonomously and thus\nwill be able to accomplish any intellectual task that a human being can. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What will happen to humans after all? There is a concept of\nuniversal basic income. The idea is that the robot replacing you is working on\nyour behalf and you are given an income sufficient to meet basic needs, with\nzero conditions on that income. Because in the end the job is being done and\nthe resources are being produced while you are free for other pursuits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There has been a lot of research interest in this regard.\nBack in the 60\u2019s, there was a researcher, John Bumpass Calhoun, who reported on\nan experiment with rats, the experiment is also known as \u201cUniverse 25\u201d. The\nresearchers provided rats with unlimited resources, such as water and food.\nBesides, they eliminated the danger otherwise coming from nature, like\npredators, climate, etc. Thus, the rats were said to be in \u201crat utopia\u201d. At\nfirst, the population peaked but shortly after it started to exhibit a variety\nof abnormal, often destructive behaviours. After some time of the experiment,\nthe rats became too lazy to reproduce and the population was on its way to\nextinction. There is, of course, the controversy over the implications of the\nexperiment but it can be perceived as one of the possible scenarios of the\nfuture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: What about the programming jobs? And\nscientists?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Bogomolov<\/strong>: Well, first we automize what we can\ndo – so far, the simplest work. AI is now partly replacing the jobs of\ntranslators and customer service work. The next in line are self-driving cars\nthat will automize the entire transportation industry, bus, and taxi drivers\nand so on. But programming jobs are of a different kind, they are creative.\nPrograms that develop other programs exist already, but they are rather limited\nin what they can do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, all jobs will be replaced. Programming jobs will\nbe among the last ones though. Just as other creative jobs, including\nscientists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day we will have a super-intelligent machine, that\ndevelops further programs similar to itself at less expense and much faster\ncompared to when supervised by humans. At some point we might not be able to\nfollow its advances anymore and here comes the term \u201ctechnological\nsingularity”. This is believed to occur when AI starts discovering new\nscience at enormous rates while always learning and evolving on top of it\nuncontrollably from human\u2019s side. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: Is the \u201csingularity\u201d inevitable? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Bogomolov<\/strong>: There is an everlasting argument\nwhether at all it is possible to realize a self-aware AI, that will act\nmindfully, much like a human. Therefore, depending on \u201cyes\u201d or \u201cno\u201d there will\nbe a technological singularity or not. It can as well occur for other reasons,\nit is just that among others AI is more likely to bring us to the technological\nsingularity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, it is not proven that such AI can ever be\ncreated, to be able to run autonomously and replace all of us. In this case,\nthere will be no AI-induced singularity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, this is now a really hot topic in the community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: Does it mean that self-awareness is\nprerequisite for a possible singularity to occur and we are not yet passed the\npoint of no return?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Bogomolov<\/strong>: Right. The algorithms that exist now\nand are known to beat the world-class champions in chess and Go are harmless.\nThey are just trained extraordinary well on one particular subject, to achieve\na well-defined goal. They are not able to think outside of the box, like \u201cwhat\nelse is there that I could do\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once we create a machine that will be able to think this\nway, to exhibit human-level consciousness, it is expected to bring us to the\nsingularity. Because it will be able to operate and develop without any\nsupervision. All existing AI technologies do develop themselves but only to a\ncertain degree, they do not have this freedom yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: Speaking about self-awareness. For example,\nSophia \u2013 the social humanoid robot developed by Hanson Robotics – realizes\nitself (herself) as being a programmed female robot. Does it mean that she is\nself-aware? How did they manage to program \u201cher\u201d self-realization?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Bogomolov<\/strong>: As far as I understand she is programmed\nto answer this way. If there comes a question about what she thinks she is, her\nanswer will be according to what has been built in her program. Most likely she\nwas trained on thousands of real dialogs among people about their\nself-awareness. Like other AI systems, she also has machine learning that, if\nyou feed it with enough data, will enable her to learn how to answer and how to\nbehave, as people would. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophia communicates very well on a topic known in advance.\nBecause in this case she can get trained in advance: they provide her with\nenough information about a given topic to get trained. Then she is able to have\na sensible conversation because she has the statistics on what is typically\nanswered when. Nevertheless, it is not as simple as when you say X, she replies\nY. Thanks to machine learning what she says is a result of rather complicated\nnon-linear connections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did not have a chance to speak with her personally though,\nbut I think she is certainly not self-aware. Otherwise, the singularity would\nhave been just around the corner by now. If she had a human-level\nconsciousness, there would be nothing that she would need people for. She would\nbe able to program herself to increase her memory. In just a few days she would\nreach the level of intelligence of all the people on Earth. In a few more days\nwe would not be able to comprehend what level of intelligence she would have –\nagain the exponential progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, there is nothing we should worry about. She is still\njust a robot – more about illusion than intelligence. The shocking effect is\nalso due to the fact that she looks like a human, has emotions and facial\nexpressions. This unique combination of her features might make us a bit alert.\nAnd for sure Sophia is a great representation of all the advances of AI\ntechnology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, to able to realize human-level AI we essentially\nneed to model a human\u2019s brain. The human brain contains around 10 neurons. On the other hand,\nfunctional neural networks have in the order of tens of millions of neurons.\nThese four orders of magnitude difference are sizeable. Moreover, it also takes\nquite some time to train a system with a large number of neurons. At the end of\nthe day, we do not yet have the capacity to realize a human-level AI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: In case something goes wrong, will we able to\n\u201cunplug\u201d the machine. Do autonomous AI systems exist yet? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Autonomous systems do exist. Think of a toy-dog, that we\nhave discussed already, or a vacuum cleaner, they are programmed to charge when\nneeded. These are completely autonomous as long as the power source is\navailable. Military branch sure has got some as well. I can imagine an armed\nflying drone, self-charging, and self-rechargeable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the existing autonomous AI systems are not a threat to\nhumans. Despite having all the advantages of machine learning they follow a\ndefined program to accomplish a specific task. It can be the best in\nrecognizing people\u2019s faces, shooting targets or avoiding bullets. But it is\nstill a mindless machine, that we can destroy, or fool or at least hide all the\npower stations from it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As long as any of these do not have human-level\nintelligence, as long as they are not smarter than us, they should not be\nconsidered as a potential threat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: So reaching human-level intelligence would be\nthe point from which on AI can potentially live without us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Bogomolov<\/strong>: Correct. There is an opinion that\nbiological life is just a means to create an electronic life. In other words,\nsome believe that this is our mission, to give birth to an electronic conscious\ncreature, surpassing our capacity, that will develop much faster than humans.\nIn some sense, it is similar to the early times of our planet. Life on Earth\nbegan relatively early. But the first living creatures – unicellular organisms\n– were progressing very slowly, until the multicellular organism occurred,\nwhich boosted the progress tremendously. And the progress always seems to be\nexponential. Thus, the idea of this theory is that we create something to keep\nup to this exponential progress. And if we look at it globally, like in the\nscale of the Universe, if this should ever happen that AI takes over the world,\nit would make sense. Because AI would go further exploring the Universe much\nfaster than we would. Thus, from the point of view of global progress, it would\nbe more advantageous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: Now, when you put it this way the technological\nsingularity does not sound so frustrating anymore. Are you optimistic overall?\nWill we make it to the end of the 21st century?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Bogomolov<\/strong>: To me, it feels great to witness the\nprogress and to be a part of it. But we will see how it goes. We live within a\nself-organized system, where everything has got a direction to go. Even though\nhumans are all independent creatures, we still obey the same laws of synergy,\nwe self-organize as well, we cluster forming cities, etc. And sure we also have\nsomething to move towards, thus we develop and evolve. So, this progress is so\nnatural. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, experts expect the technological singularity to occur already in the 21st century. But it is not trivial to give a correct estimate. On the other hand, not related to AI, there is research going on in the field of so-called negligible senescence. The idea is that by engineering the reversal of all the major molecular and cellular changes that occur with age we would enable us to constantly rejuvenate ourselves. The researchers believe that negligible aging for humans will be achieved in this century. There even exists a provocative opinion that the first human beings who will live to 1,000 years old are already alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the day, there has been tremendous progress in\nmany fields, not only AI. Along with AI, we may succeed in developing other\ntechnologies, which will help us to prolong our lives as well as humans\u2019 in\ngeneral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUnQ<\/strong>: Thank you very much for the interview!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Mariia Filianina<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n [1]\n <\/td>\n http:\/\/deepdreamgenerator.com<\/a>\n <\/td><\/tr>
\n [2]\n <\/td>\n L.A. Gatys, A.S. Ecker and M. Bethge arXiv<\/em>1508.06576 (2015).\n <\/td><\/tr>
\n [3]\n <\/td>\n https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Turing_test<\/a>\n <\/td><\/tr>
\n [4]\n <\/td>\n A. Hosny, C. Parmar, J. Quackenbush, L.H. Schwartz and H.J.W.L. Aerts Nature\n Reviews Cancer<\/em> 18<\/strong>, 500 (2018).\n <\/td><\/tr>
\n [5]\n <\/td>\n https:\/\/www.ted.com\/speakers\/aubrey_de_grey<\/a>\n <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anton Bogomolov[1] is a data scientist with PhD in Physics, currently working in IoT branch. He is passionate for artificial intelligence with ten years of experience in automated data analysis and machine learning. [1]abogomolov86@gmail.com JUnQ: The everlasting technological progress is aimed to fulfill many needs of humans: most of them are physical, informational and commercial.… Read More »Some thoughts on artificial intelligence<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3821"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3821"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3835,"href":"https:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3821\/revisions\/3835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}