A Few Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence, Idiot Systems, Implant Computing and other Topics
Here are some key issues and technologies that should be part of a strategic planning exercise no matter what business you are in.
1. Even with the explosive pace of technology, human endeavors in artificial intelligence are still very primitive.
2. The pace of the pursuit of human-made systems remains, for the most part, an extension of machines rather than an extension of human knowledge processing. If this approach continues, there will be vastly sophisticated high-speed processing devices that will provide elegant simulations of real- world conditions. However, these conditions will parallel the real world rather than interact with it.
3. The development of new technology continues to outstrip society?s ability to absorb its effects, much less its potential consequences. However, technology is like the extension of a rubber band stretched far ahead. While society is anchored in the past and holds the rubber band back, technological change stretches the rubber band ahead. The rubber band keeps getting stretched further until, sometime, it will break, splintering society into widely diverse factions. Everything from terrorism to AIDS is being impacted by the increasing rate of communication and the knowledge of underlying issues.
4. With the acceleration of technology, the concept of artificial intelligence becomes an even more perplexing enigma. There have been business problems that have always existed: labor, working conditions, inventory, supply, and finance, and now there are issues, such as environmental impact, career planning, telecommuting, and productivity. Other new problems are on the horizon, and these merge with the old problems. Together with the needs of competitive advantage, new market demands, and global distribution, networks provide little opportunity for human-made systems to be up-to-the-moment. This doesn?t make the study of artificial intelligence worthless. AI permits organizations to exist where none were possible before. Much as one 100-horsepower motor took the place of 100 workers in textile mills a century ago, AI will become the intelligent worker of the future.
Some of the major technologies that offer the greatest potential are:
1. Neural networks. The subtle but truly amazing ability of the mind, upon a second?s glance, to recognize a face unseen for ten years and, at the same moment, forget where the car keys are. Automated neural networks offer nearly all industries and humankind new intelligent tools that become increasingly more human with use. This is partially due to the fact that most business is based on human interaction and human thinking processes. Systems that begin to learn about humans in humanlike ways, rather than humans adapting to machinelike ways, offer an incredible business opportunity.
2. Visualization systems. Visualization systems are those systems that convey and process information graphically. Rather than machines that see, these are complex machines that are able to potentially understand doodles, notes, ideas, and images as humans do. Humans interact with one another and their world in nearly a totally sensory way, and for the most part, in a totally visual way. Images are formed, sequences are organized, events are cataloged, and life-spans are archived, frame after frame. Visualization systems process information and provide, like pages in a book, frames or windows of events, concepts, and emotional situations. With advances in image processing and storage technology, we are now able to record every moment of everyone?s lives at a phenomenally low cost. The ability to record every moment is less critical in itself than the ability to use this information as part of a person?s expertise or skill, not unlike the skill of a successful CEO or manager whose ability and related compensation come from their knowledge, manipulation, and organization of certain facts to the financial benefit of an organization. By capturing personal information and by organizing it in a certain way, individuals will be able to market their own automated data bases to organizations, much like ?human? software programs. Throughout history, the power of information derives from, among other things, its ability to move from one point to another?its portability?and its usability when it arrives. Employment potential has also meant being in the right place with the right skill at the right time. The greatest problem with the demise of the industrial era is that in an information society skills can rarely be transmitted from one generation to the next. New skills are required, and people?s ability to organize information and themselves is critical to their overall success.
The development of systems and software that allow people to develop their own personal knowledge systems of information and provide that as marketable information will be as important in the near future as the latest generation of hybrid was to a farmer one hundred years ago. Visualization systems are not robot vision devices that can navigate through a maze; they are systems that interact with humans and with the world in a visual way. More than intelligent graphics, these systems convey knowledge and interact with other visual systems via visual language, operating in much the same way as a speaker who might begin a presentation by saying, ?Let me tell you a story.?
3. Idiot systems (dumb expert systems). The problem that presently exists with most expert systems is that they either require so much expertise that it takes an expert to use one, or they solve problems within too narrow a scope to be useful in the real world. What is really needed is an ignorant machine or idiot system (IS) machine. An IS knows nothing but is willing to learn about anything; it?s a system that does not pretend to be the expert, but makes a good apprentice. This system can tolerate enormous amounts of ambiguity, logic jumps, and gut reactions. It?s more like a pencil than a personal computer/tablet.
4. Training tools. The greatest limitation to computer technology is the instruction manual. People, whether they know how to or not, do not read the manuals. On-line ?help? files are hardly any better. Tools are needed that communicate with the students/users rather than teach them. Use of the computer as a communication tool may be its single most useful function for most people. It may take more than voice recognition to make the computer really useful, and it will probably take a lot more than that, because most people don?t have computers today. Learning systems in the future may take the form of not only the idiot system mentioned above, but also those systems designed to learn about you. Future teaching and training systems will not only have to provoke and motivate the student into learning what is needed today, but also teach people how to learn. In this sense, the people and the learning system can adapt to whatever working or living situation they encounter in the future.
5. Implant computing (IC). The evolution of the computer now permits serious consideration of machine-based systems that replace, or more importantly, augment or enhance biological functions. Much like technological steroids, there are systems that offer humans not only an aid to their biological functions but increased potential as well. Early systems of this type are now in the laboratories, such as those which allow persons with spinal injury to walk again and those devices that are able to detect certain types of diseases. With the expansion of IC, enormous improvements in medicine are possible. Detection and automatic insertion of corrective medicine may eliminate many diseases. This does not necessarily mean that the disease is eradicated but, in many cases, the disease can be stopped with early detection and some corrective measures can be taken. The development of implant computing will also allow direct access (at the user?s choice) to and from other ?true? machines as well as other people. This will, over the long term, blur the distinction between humans and machines, supporting and enhancing each other?s ability to survive and function.
In conclusion, technology always changes over the long-term much faster than we are able to predict, and society always changes at rates equally unpredictable, though often vastly slower than we think possible. I would like to leave you with my favorite quote from the Scottish psychiatrist, R.D. Laing, ?But what we think is less than what we know; what we know is less than what we love; what we love so much less than what there is. And to that precise extent we are so much less than what we are.?
It may be impossible for a machine to understand this, but when one does, and I think it will, we will understand so much more about ourselves than we ever thought possible.
THOMAS B. CROSS
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