I think that the Human Self Esteem has been lowering as the new technology is coming up. Firstly, the humans believed themselves i.e. Earth to be the center of the universe. But to their utter dismay, astrologists proved that earth revolves round the center of sun and even Sun is not the center of the universe.
We used to believe ourselves to be different from Animals but Charles Darwin came and proved that we are the direct descendents of monkeys and are no different from animals. Infact, modern research has proved that only a few thousand genes (less than 1% of the total genes) make us different from them. Everyday new genes are being identified for certain characteristics, traits, qualities and diseases to make you believe that you are nothing more than a bio-chemical machine.
We considered ourselves to be intelligent, but a Computer was made to beat the best chess player of the world. Computers are getting better and better at stuff we thought only, we, the sentient beings were capable of doing. With the advent of self-learning machines, I think, it will be the biggest blow to our self esteem. The thing which we pride ourselves with, is the ability to learn(the reason why we are intelligent), but we find that computers can do that too. Self-learning machines are present everywhere. The most popular example of them being the AIBO Robots released by Sony. Others being machine based language translation, speech recognizers, search engines, handwriting recognition, game playing etc.
We consider ourselves different because we have emotions but recently a robot was made which is able to have facial expressions and emotions. Although, it is a prototype, but a very good one at that.
So, what are we, are we special creatures with souls or are we just another advanced form of self-learning machine. Well that remains to be seen, but seeing the advancement in self-learning systems, I find myself tilting towards the second option. Though, I would still like to believe in the first option…
Search This Blog
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Diminishing Human Self Esteem
Labels:
General Rants
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
AI depends on heuristics fed to the ROM of the robot by humans.
ReplyDeleteThe limit to the learning power of a machine is in that sense limited by how humans program the robot.
Self Learning algos are again based on prior experience and corrections and feedback given by humans :). In short your spell checker or handwriting recognizer is only able to learn because a human teaches it. Humans define what is right or wrong.
AI tries to quantify experience and store in the machine, the day robos can figure out how to pass on their experience to other machines around them without human intervention (and therefore increase their knowledge on non-context specfic issues as well) then robos will truly be self-learners.
Nice robo but :)
Cheers!
If humans don't control the self-learning part by limiting the domain of it, the results can be scary.
ReplyDeleteI will second that.
ReplyDeleteEverything is cool as long as we don't allow these machines to control our lives.
The ability to think and act on it's own will eventually lead to judgment day.
Humans will never stop in developing new technologies but these inventions will be our downfall in the long run.
Once we become completely dependent on them, the things we own now will start owning us tomorrow.
i haven't read the earlier comments in detail, tho i think the one by Hammy is kinda similar to what i'm about to say.
ReplyDeleteI think you are missing an important fact, that WE HAVE BUILT these things. It is because of our understanding that these objects are created. Another thing that just struck me - they can't make us :p
Plus, they still have alot of shortcomings. It is we who can improve these shortcomings.
I hope you become sanguine about the first option now.
Good point, but the basic essence of humans is that they can love, respect and learn from their experience. Suppose, we teach robots to do that in future ... won't that be cool.
ReplyDeleteAnd I do believe in the first option and will do so until the science proves otherwise
ReplyDeletetrue.but i think on the other side of story.ai holds no competition 2 us .its them who get motivated from us .developers want them to behave like us.and even if competetion really exist then v should see that they are working with there full potential and Right now we make use of only 10% of our brain . even if artificial intelligence evolves,may be at faster rate,we are evolving too.as you said every next generations are smarter than descedents (monkeys).And our futurist expect alot from us too.Who knows what will be the next evolution(i m not talking about x-men).i know i m getting imaginative on this but let Artificial Intelligence be 'Artificial',atleast for next two decades.And man be superior human being with soul.
ReplyDeleteok , i didnt saw ur (most)recent 2 comments:)
ReplyDeletei may be missing the point here.
ReplyDeletebut you can't deny the fact that what i said is going to happen in the future. may be 50 yrs from now but it will happen someday.
well..i no it luks really awkward on my part to comment on ur blog after such a long time sins its posting..still..Deeps, i 2 wud prefer 2 stick wit wot ur frenz ve opined.it's us who created the computers n infact brot d term 'Technology' to existence.imagine,had v restricted ourselves to the neolithic n paleolithic age,wud v b able to witness 'Today'??so it's all dependent on us..
ReplyDeleteBut it's true that everything needs to b done in moderation.v shudnt b totally dependent on gadgets.infact as per surveys those who use gadgets for their daily chores take more time to complete them.thanx to their total surrender to the gadgets.hence everything is best done in moderation.
If v teach them how to respect emotions, v can also make them unlearn.
And yes...computers are not exactly foolproof when it cums to chess..don't believe me...?Ask Gary Kasparov. the world chess champion defeated IBM Computer deep Blue in a chess competition..perhaps the maker of the computer was Vishwanathan Anand then.;)
cheers..
tc..
@Iceman : I can't deny the fact that it is going to happen. But I can doubt whether in our lifetime or not :).
ReplyDelete@Vandana : No it doesn't.
Point taken regarding Technology and is especially good to hear from you :).