Examining the Ethics behind Artificial Intelligence
Examining the Ethics behind Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence has been the subject of many movies and countless science fiction novels. But what happens when we seriously consider the question of computers that think. Is it possible for computers to have complex thoughts, and even emotions? This paper will seek to answer that question and give an idea about how artificial intelligence will effect the world of tomorrow.
As has long been known, invincible chess can theoretically be played by a mindless system, as long as it follows a simple algorithm, routinely learned by computer science undergraduates, that traces out the consequences of each possible move until either a mate or draw position is found. In the spring of 1996, IBM’s Deep Blue computer defeated the world’s greatest living chess player, Gary Kasparov. But Deep Blue, while an impressive chess player, does not remotely demonstrate humanlike thinking. (Masci) Artificial Intelligence is the capacity of a digital computer or computer controlled robot device to perform tasks commonly associated with the higher intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience. Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world. Varying kinds and degrees of intelligence occur in people, many animals and some machines. So far, there is no solid definition of intelligence that doesn't depend on relating it to human intelligence. The problem is that we cannot yet characterize in general what kinds of computational procedures we want to call intelligent. We understand some of the mechanisms of intelligence and not others. Intelligence involves mechanisms, and AI research has discovered how to make computers carry out some of them and not others. If doing a task requires only mechanisms that are well understood today, computer programs can give very impressive performances on these tasks. The ultimate effort is to make computer programs that can solve problems and achieve goals in the world as well as humans. However, many people involved in particular research areas are much less ambitious. Most artificial intelligence researchers believe that new fundamental ideas are required, and therefore it cannot be predicted when human level intelligence will be achieved. Computer Science is of two minds about artificial intelligence. Some computer scientists believe that all human thought is algorithmic and that artificial intelligence engineers will eventually replicate the human mind and create a robot complete...