AI ( Artificial Intelligence ) : How far have we reached ?

  Wondering what is AI ? Here's everything you need   to know

Consider the following scenario. A paralysed man participates in a clinical trial of a brain–computer interface (BCI). A computer connected to a chip in his brain is trained to interpret the neural activity resulting from his mental rehearsals of an action. The computer generates commands that move a robotic arm. One day, the man feels frustrated with the experimental team. Later, his robotic hand crushes a cup after taking it from one of the research assistants, and hurts the assistant. Apologizing for what he says must have been a malfunction of the device, he wonders whether his frustration with the team played a part.

This scenario is hypothetical. But it illustrates some of the challenges that society might be heading towards.

Current BCI technology is mainly focused on therapeutic outcomes, such as helping people with spinal-cord injuries. It already enables users to perform relatively simple motor tasks — moving a computer cursor or controlling a motorized wheelchair, for example. Moreover, researchers can already interpret a person's neural activity from functional magnetic resonance imaging scans at a rudimentary level¹ — that the individual is thinking of a person, say, rather than a car.

It might take years or even decades until BCI and other neurotechnologies are part of our daily lives. But technological developments mean that we are on a path to a world in which it will be possible to decode people's mental processes and directly manipulate the brain mechanisms underlying their intentions, emotions and decisions; where individuals could communicate with others simply by thinking; and where powerful computational systems linked directly to people's brains aid their interactions with the world such that their mental and physical abilities are greatly enhanced.

Such advances could revolutionize the treatment of many conditions, from brain injury and paralysis to epilepsy and schizophrenia, and transform human experience for the better. But the technology could also exacerbate social inequalities and offer corporations, hackers, governments or anyone else new ways to exploit and manipulate people. And it could profoundly alter some core human characteristics: private mental life, individual agency and an understanding of individuals as entities bound by their bodies.

 Artificial intelligence , better known as AI is the ability of a machine to learn and implement tasks that require ' Natural Human Intelligence ' . The concept of AI was first coined by John McCarthy , who described it as

 "Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it . An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language , form abstractions and concepts , solve kinds of problems , now reserved for humans , and improve themselves."

In simple words "AI is a self learning machine that has the capability to solve problems that require Natural Instincts ( like face and speech recognition , decision making , and visual perception ) , and can improve itself ."

Artificial intelligence can be divided into three major categories , Weak AI , Strong AI and Singularities . 

We have been dealing with Weak AI or Artificial Narrow Intelligence for quite a time . A Weak AI is a machine that is excellent in a particular field , but has no knowledge how the human brain will respond to any other situation , like the Deep Blue ( A chess playing computer designed by IBM which in its first attempt won two out of six matches against the world champion Garry Kasparov in 1996 ) .

A strong AI or Artificial General Intelligence is a system that has the capability to think and act like humans . Such a machine is self learning and gradually increases its potential so that it can easily replace humans . These AIs are not so common , though there have been people trying to build the same ( Zuckerberg with the Jarvis , and Elon Musk with Open AI ) . 

And now comes Singularity . Singularities or Artificial Super Intelligence are AIs that are even better than humans . Once a strong AI is built , it keeps on learning new things and keeps improving itself , gradually progressing to become Singularities . Singularities are much more superior than humans . Once it learns the art of regeneration , it can become dangerous to the mankind .

There has been great progress in the field of AI development . Google's DeepMind has developed a neural network that can make connections and reach meanings without using any pre-defined algorithm . It has also created a Neural Turing Machine where we can connect an external memory to the brain such that the neural network can access and use it .
Open AI is yet another AI research company that promotes the development of friendly AI . Recently , the company invented a method by which humans can interact with robots and teach them as if they were humans . 

We have gone long with the developments of AI . In a very recent case , OpenAI bot defeated all professional Dota 2 players from all across the world , including one of the best Dota 2 players , Dendi . at the Valve's yearly Dota 2 tournament ( For reference , the winning prize for the champion is $ 24 million ) . This was achieved with just two weeks of real time learning by the AI . 

In a similar series of events , DeepMind's alphago  defeated Lee Sedol , a Go world champion in 2016 . Go is a one of the most brilliant games . It is a 3000 year old chinese board game , where the aim is to surround more territory than the opponent ( For reference , In China and Japan ,  interested 5-7 year old children are sent to Go schools rather than normal schools , to learn Go for 12 hours a day , 7 days a week . And there are not more Go board configurations than the atoms in the universe , so pre-defined algorithms can't work ) .

Companies want to expand the reach of such AIs from games to real world problems to be useful and make some real impact . They're developing general purpose learning algorithms which could be taken from the games and applied to other fields like health care and robotics as well . Tesla's self driven car is a great example . In 2016 , an event ocurred where the self driven car took the driver who suffered heart attack to the hospital by itself . AIs have revolutionised the diagnosis of Cancer . Not so long ago , Microsoft demonstrated its AI that could reach the efficiency of humans in speech recognition . Google assistant , Siri and Cortana are AIs present in almost every other mobile phones .

With this much advancement in the development of artificial intelligence , we are certainly heading towards a danger . Nothing is more dangerous than a self learning , self improving and self producing machine . Some scientists consider AIs as the next biggest threat to humankind . According to Stephen Hawking , if an AI gains the ability to re-design itself , this could lead to human extinction . Elon Musk considers AI as humanity's biggest existential threat . Maybe tomorrow there will be only machines all-over , not humans !  I hope in future , we will come out with some algorithms that will prevent machines from harming mankind , otherwise Terminators will happen for real !!


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