1.Who were these people, and how did/does each contribute to the development of artificial intelligence? How did/does each think “intelligence” could be identified? (~50 words each)
Alan Turing was a British mathematician and cryptographer. Turing made many contributions to the development of AI, including proposing a test method for determining whether a machine is intelligent, the Turing test. In addition, the famous Turing machine model proposed by Turing laid the foundation for the way logic works in modern computers (Biography, 2020; Turing, 1950).
John McCarthy was the director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford University. He was the first to coin the term “Artificial Intelligence”, and later initiated the Dartmouth Conference, the most important conference in AI. Then he introduced the concept of time-sharing for computer input and invented the Lisp programming language for AI (McCarthy, 2007).
Herb Simon is the recipient of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics and the 1975 Turing Award. He led the design of the world’s first working artificial intelligence software 10sicTheorist in 1956. He then collaborated on the development of the IPL language, one of the first AI programming languages, and introduced the first table processing methods. Additionally, he used AI to develop one of the first chess-playing programs, MATER (UBS, n.d.).
Marvin Minsky pioneered the theory of frames, the core of which is the complete and exact representation of knowledge in the form of frames. He also combined artificial intelligence technology with robotics and developed Robot C, the world’s first robot capable of simulating human activities. He firmly believes that machines can simulate human thinking processes and that machines can be intelligent and even emotional (BBC News, 2016).
Timnit Gebru, a leader in the field of AI models for risk and inequality analysis, was fired by Google for an unpublished paper in 2020. This paper questioned: Are language models too big? Who would benefit from them? Do they increase bias and inequality (Hao, 2020)?
2.How do “machine (programming) languages” differ from human (natural) ones? (~100 words).
For example, read Languages vs. Programming languages (Links to an external site.) (Harris, 2018).
Harris (2018) summarizes 3 differences between machine languages and human ones:
Machine languages don’t really have morphology, at least not in the way that human languages change their grammar based on context.
Machine languages cannot evolve and develop in the same way as human languages. There is no room for error or improvisation ( including but not limited to dialects, slang, jargon, argot, namesake, accents, mispronounced words, typos, and irregular punctuations
Machine languages do not have the emotions that human languages convey, such as body movements, volume, facial expressions, and eye contact.
3.How does “machine (artificial) intelligence” differ from the human version? (~100 words).
For example, read the full article On the measure of intelligence (Links to an external site.) or just the Abstract (Links to an external site.) (Chollet, 2019).
Chollet (2019) proposes a new definition of intelligence based on Algorithmic Information Theory, describing intelligence as the efficiency of skill-acquisition and “highlighting the concepts of scope, generalization difficulty, priors, and experience”. Chollet agrees that when we give machines enough data (translated from prior knowledge and experience), machine intelligence is far superior to humans in acquiring certain skills because the human brain has far less computational power than machines. I think that is also why when we talk about the current accomplishments of AI, we often mention the recent developments of cloud computing and big data. Conversely, human intelligence may have strengths in scope and generalization difficulties since we have subjective points of view in observation, association and logical thinking.
4.How does “machine learning” differ from human learning? (~100 words)
For example, read Why algorithms can be racist and sexist. A computer can make a decision faster. That doesn’t make it fair (Links to an external site.) (Heilweil, 2020)
and Artificial Intelligence Has a Problem With Gender and Racial Bias. Here’s How to Solve It (Links to an external site.)(Buolamwini, 2019).
As I could not open the either of above links (may be due to the limited access from my VPN provider?), I chose to explore this question by reading other articles on the same topic:
Anyangwe, E. (2020, March 10). Algorithms that run our lives are racist and sexist. Meet the women trying to fix them. The Correspondent. https://thecorrespondent.com/339/algorithms-that-run-our-lives-are-racist-and-sexist-meet-the-women-trying-to-fix-them
Julianna, P. (2021). Fighting algorithmic bias in artificial intelligence. Physics World, 5. https://physicsworld.com/fighting-algorithmic-bias-in-artificial-intelligence/
In China, you can often hear Chinese people chortle, “I don’t know if I’m using artificial intelligence or artificial retardation.” The use of AI has become so common because of the rollout of 5G devices that many times we don’t even know it exists. But there are times when our electronic devices give us back a clearly wrong answer, and we as non-AI developers can clearly know that we have met AI. As Julianna (2021) explains, all kinds of bias exist in our existing AI programs because the data for machine learning comes from our subjective human designs. When our designs are not entirely objective and fair, the machine will profoundly reflect the flaws in our designs from its large amount of repetitive learning.
5.And for your LAST challenge, a version of the Turing Test: how do YOUR answers to these questions differ from what a machine could generate? (~200 words)
For this last question, think about whether your responses only reported information derived from online searches? In your responses to these questions, what transformative kinds of thinking and/or reasoning processes have you engaged in order to formulate your answers, that exceed or differ from what artificial intelligence can do? Do you think there are ANY distinguishing features that would identify your responses as having been formulated by a human, and not a machine, intelligence? What and why?
When I reviewed my answers, I realized that almost all of my answers were distillations of some online information, that an AI bot could easily output. When answering the 4th question, I tried for days to open the link provided by the teacher but failed, tried to search the title of the article and couldn’t find it either, so I had to look through some random related articles to try to gain knowledge and ideas for answering the question. So would a robot make the same move? If the programmer is careful enough, it is possible to design the same action, except that the articles we choose to read on our own will have a random nature.
The only thing that could potentially set my answer apart from the AI program might be my first sentence in question 4, where I stated a language-based joke from a non-English speaking country. That was as one of my favourite everyday observations, so I was very eager to share this joke in this question, even if it wasn’t very relevant to the topic. However, I think in an answer with a strict word count requirement, neither the bot nor the developer behind it would probably want to share this bland observation.
References:
BBC News. (2016, January 26). AI pioneer Marvin Minsky dies aged 88.
Biography. (2020, July 22). Alan Turing.
Chollet, F. (2019, November 5). On the Measure of Intelligence.
Hao, K. (2020). We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s what it says. MIT Technology Review.
Harris, A. (2018). Languages vs. Programming languages.
Julianna, P. (2021). Fighting algorithmic bias in artificial intelligence. Physics World, 5. https://physicsworld.com/fighting-algorithmic-bias-in-artificial-intelligence/McCarthy (2007). What is Artificial Intelligence?
Turing, A. M. (1950). Computing, Machinery and Intelligence. Mind 49: 433-460.
UBS (n.d.). Meet the Nobel Laureates in Economics: Do we understand human behaviour.