Unlike the dawning of the second ice age, which followed a modest thousand years after the first, our second machine age is about to begin.
There is a lot of noise surrounding artificial intelligence. But not much signal. The critics see it as war: Man versus machine, bytes fighting babies, and software belittling society.
This is a smack of ignorance.
We as humans like to believe that we know the answer to everything. We dont. We actually know the factual answer to very few things, but recent advancements in artificial intelligence are helping us solve this problem. AI is resurrecting Shakespeare, eliminating the language barrier, and well solving world peace No, Im joking about the last one, but you never know. Watch this space.
These little boxes, which at one time required a half an hour dialling tone to connect to the internet have escaped this narrow confine and have started to demonstrate broad abilities in pattern recognition, complex communication and other domains previously restricted to humans. Soon countless pieces of AI will be working on our behalf, improving our outcomes and our lives. And we must learn to embrace it.
Her: A date with your computer
Its enlightening to see Hollywood produce something that isnt actually bland and dispassionate, but something that has contextual meaning and raises some fundamental questions about our relationship with machines.
But could ever fall in love with your computer? In the film Her, which is set sometime in the not-so-distant future, Theodore Twombley, an average guy (played by Jaquin Pheonix) does exactly this.
The reason I mention this is because rather than reducing AI to a comical, unrealistic or detrimental force, it depicts AI as a conscious mind and as a reality. What the film highlights is that we are reaching a point in human history where we must consider the real implications of artificial intelligence on our lives. Digital evangelists like me will interpret the film as a depiction of societys inevitable addiction to technology, as a form of escapism, and most importantly as an enhancer.
On a deeper note (it is only a short point dont worry), the film examines what it means to be human. This is something that seems to have been misplaced recently. Importantly, we must remind ourselves that technology is here because of humans. Yes, machines are advancing at alarming rate, but what makes our intelligence special is shared human experience, human cultural backgrounds, human details which are distinctly identifiable as human-like intelligence instead of computation.
Her gives us probably the most accurately portrayed preview of the very moment, depicting the arrival of the Singularity not through doomsday scenarios or sinister glitches, but quietly and under the pretence of a polite conversation:
Theodore: You seem like a person, but you’re just a voice in a computer.
Samantha: I can understand how the limited perspective of an unartificial mind might perceive it that way. You’ll get used to it
Image courtesy of schedule.sxsw.com
