November 4, 2009 • 34 mins
In this listener-inspired episode of TechStuff, Jonathan and Chris explore the topic of artificial intelligence, from definitions to current AI technology to philosophical implications.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. You've heard
the rumors before, perhaps and whispers written between the lines
of the textbooks. Conspiracies, paranormal events, all those things that
(00:24):
disappear from the official explanations. Tune in and learn more
of the stuff they don't want you to know in
this video podcast from how stuff works dot com. Hello everybody,
and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Pouette,
(00:45):
and I'm the tech editor here at how stuff works
dot com. Sitting across from me as usual, is Senior
Ryan Jonathan Strickland's up, y'all very nice, changed up a
little bit, Okay, I'm fine with that. So before we
get started, I just wanted to mentioned something. I saw
this email going out about a new show that's coming
up on the Science Channel. Yeah, it's called The Road
(01:07):
to Punkin Chunkin. And then immediately it's followed by punkin Chunkin.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you saw this email too. Yeah.
It's a Thanksgiving night here in the United States, so yeah,
starts at eight. That's the Road to Punkin Chunkin, followed
by Punkin Chunkin at nine. And if you don't know
what this is about, it's really about designing machines that
(01:28):
can throw a pumpkin a really far distance. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
They used to do that with with tribute sches and
stuff like that, but now they have these air powered cannons. Yeah,
it's gonna be pretty crazy. So, uh, you should definitely
check it out. I'm gonna be watching it myself. I
think there's nothing I like more than a little pumpkin destruction. Awesome. Well,
(01:51):
so what are we gonna talk about today? Today's topic
comes to us courtesy of a little listener mail. Well,
all right, then this is list Your mail comes from
our ninth grader listener named Alexandra. I'm sure we have
other ninth graders, but this one in particular road to us.
Thank you, Alexandra, and here is the message. Hey you guys,
(02:13):
I have a suggestion for a topic, Artificial intelligence. My
favorite show is Night Writer two thousand eight. Kit the
Talking Car is said to have the most advanced AI
in the world. Is AI in cars and other devices
coming soon? Will they have personalities? Thanks for a great podcast.
P s. I like the eighties Night Writer too. So
you're talking about night Writer, you're talking about KIT, which
of course is the Night Industries two thousand artificially intelligent car.
(02:38):
By the way, do you remember what Kit's arch nemesis
car was called? Oh, we'll see I now now. I
didn't remember what it stood for. I knew that it
was car, Yes, Car K A r R. It stands
for Night Automated Roving Robot. Do you remember the main
character's name? Besides Kit and Night Writer met the main
character Michael, Yes, Michael Night. Who do you remember what
(03:01):
his name was before became Michael Knight? Oh? No, actually
I don't. Michael Arthur Long undercover agents shot in the face.
He had to be rehabilitated. They rebuilt his face, gave
it David Hasselhoss face for some reason. He's huge in
Germany and U. He became Michael Knight because it was
Night Industries. Did I just have one question for you?
(03:22):
Did you did you look that up? Or did you
know that off the top of your head? I wrote
all that down from memory. I like Alexandra, I was
a bit of a fan of the nineteen eighties night Writers. Well,
I thought I was, but apparently I was a lower
case F fan and not an upper case I also
wanted to throw out throw out the phrase I was saying,
the the little joke I made to you before we
(03:45):
started recording this podcast, Michael, let's drive to Congress and
if any of you know why I said it that
way and what the whole Congress thing is, reference to
write me tech stuff at how stuff works dot com.
First person to get it right gets a kudos. Just
not a granola bar. Not a granola bar. I mean,
(04:06):
if I encounter you on the street and I happen
to have a granola bar, I will be happy to
hand it over to you. If I don't have a
granola bar, we're kind of ada luck on that one.
So this brings us to our topic granola bars. No,
I'm sorry, artificial intelligence. I got off on a tangent there,
So artificial intelligence now, she asked, is artificial intelligence coming
(04:28):
to other devices and cars as well? And will they
have personalities? Um, here's the interesting thing about artificial intelligence.
The definition is somewhat vague. For example, Chris, how would
you define artificial intelligence? I mean, nope, there are no
right or wrong answers. Just when you hear the term,
(04:48):
what is it that you think of? Well, you know,
of course there's the movie Okay, yes, there's the film
that was started by Stanley Kubrick completed by Steven Spielberg
that lasted thirty minut it's too long and should have
ended with a Little Boy in the Ocean spoiler alert.
But beyond that, you know this, This is the effect
of Odyssey of the Mind on my brain, because I'm
(05:11):
trained to think of everything but the actual answer, Um, no,
I want I When I think of artificial intelligence, um,
you know, actually, one of the first things that comes
to mind is games because people talk about the AI
in a particular game, all the AI and this game
is really good. Yeah, and uh, you know of course
robots mostly androids, things like that. Yeah, but yeah, I
(05:36):
mean those things and and and walking talking. You know.
It's always the movie version of our official intelligence where
there's you know, something and of course it's evil. It's
usually evil example, you know, and it's thinking, and it's
it's decided that we're irrelevant and it's going to kill
us all. I mean that, isn't it nice? It's pretty
much gonna happen. But no, no, no, so here's here's
(05:59):
here's my ulswer. Yeah, but to know that it's coming
and it will kill me. Yes, my Hunter Civic will
eventually do me in. Um No, here's what I think
of when I think artificial intelligence. I think of a
an artificial construct. So some sort of man made thing
that is capable of sensing its environment, reacting to its environment,
(06:22):
and learning from its experiences. Now, to me, the learning
part is the most important because if it's if it's
only taking in it's uh, you know, some sort of
sensory input and then reacting to it, there's not really
any thinking going on there. I mean, essentially, you're just
it's it's stimulus response, right, Yeah, And that's pretty much
(06:43):
how I carry out my day. I just some of
us are a little higher functioning than Chris, and we
we occasionally spare a thought or two for something. Um No,
Chris is actually a very intelligent person. I I people
get on to me about picking on you. You know that, right,
I don't. Chris and I are actually good buddies here. Yeah, yeah,
(07:04):
so at any rate, at any rate, So yeah, I think, uh,
I think learning is an important element in artificial intelligence,
so that not only are you able to react to
something that's in your environment, but you learn from that
experience and you are able to handle similar experiences in
a better way in the future. So, for example, you
encounter if if you have an artificially intelligent construct that
(07:25):
is UH susceptible to melting and it encounters a heat
source that is higher than it's melting point, and it
detects this and then backs away and then has to
try and UH factor in a route around this heat
source so that it can continue doing whatever it was
it was doing beforehand. UM. After encountering that, it might
(07:48):
be able to build on that experience and be able
to solve a similar problem in half the time, and
ideally you have this increminal improvement. UM. It's also called
self recursive improvement, where you have an experience, you learn
from it, and you are able to do it more
efficiently or effectively, however you want to quantify it in
(08:08):
the future. So right now, using that definition, we don't
really have a truly good example of artificial intelligence. There's
some that are really close, UM, but there's nothing out
there that's that's like a computer that can understand how
computers work and therefore design its own successor to be
(08:32):
a more powerful version of itself. So um, yeah, no, uh,
what was the computer in Hitchhiker's Guide Deep Thought? So
deep Thought? Yeah, deep Thought? And uh in Hitticker's Guide
to the Galaxy, there's this computer called deep Thought that
is so intelligent that it is able to come up
with the answer to life, the universe, and everything. It
(08:54):
is not able to come up with the question it's
the answer to a question, but it's not. But it
can actually get the question. To get the question, it
has to build a computer even smarter than itself, but
it's able to do that. So it can't solve the problem,
but it can build a tool that can solve the
problem that ends up being the planet Earth in that
in that series of books. Now, that's actually an idea
(09:16):
that's being explored in computer science. It's an idea of
can we build a machine that can understand how machines
work and therefore build a better version of the machine
because it can make these calculations far faster and more
effectively than any human can. And once you reach that point,
that's when we hit what we've We've talked about this
in the past. We've talked about in another podcast. But
(09:37):
the singularity, which is where you've reached the point where
machines or or even humans. It doesn't have to be
a machine. It could be like somehow we have biologically
altered ourselves so that we can do this to ourselves.
But we the improvements come so quickly that uh, that
there's no way to distinguish one moment from the next
as far as technological advancement goes, because it's just going
(10:00):
easing fast and we've reached a brand new reality, at
least as far as our perspective is concerned. Uh, to
the outside observer, it wouldn't be quite the same. And
I did mention that we have some stuff that's coming close.
The one I wanted to talk about just mention, uh
was the Cornell Research um UH project where they had
(10:21):
the computer that analyzed the pendulum. Do you remember reading
the story There was a new story. It was back
earlier this year. There was a group of Cornell computer scientists.
They had designed a computer and all the computer was
doing was observing the movements of a pendulum and then
from those movements working out the laws of physics, so
(10:43):
it would observe the way the pendulum moved, the speed
at which it moved, how much it slowed down, and
it started to work out the laws of thermodynamics. It's
you know, physical laws, classical physics. And it turned out
to be really good at it. It didn't get it
exactly right at the very beginning, but it kept observing
just like humans would. It kept observing the the phenomena
(11:04):
and then making guesses and and then testing those guesses,
throwing out anything that didn't fit over time, and keeping
everything that did fit, and eventually it was able to
work out the basic laws of physics. Now that I
had not read that. That's a pretty cool example of
artificial intelligence, and the idea that this was able to
observe something in its environment and draw conclusions from it.
(11:27):
Um Now, it had been programmed to be able to observe,
so I mean, it wasn't like it had developed capabilities
beyond its programming. I think that's another sign of artificial intelligence.
When you've created something that can go beyond what you
had originally programmed it for. That's another sign of intelligence.
You know a lot of people think that used to
(11:48):
the if you will, the classical definition of artificial intelligence.
You know, the touring tests. Yes, the Touring tests Alan Touring,
and I was a little surprised you didn't start with him,
to be honest, Yeah, I I thought about it, um,
because this is a when you get to artificial intelligence,
it really is a philosophical matter. It's not just technological,
it's not just computer science. It is philosophy. Well, you know, uh,
(12:10):
when I was doing research for the podcast, I found
a great resource at Stanford. And it's funny because when
I think of Alan Touring, I think of computer science,
but it's actually the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy where I
encountered his thoughts on artificial intelligence and the imitation game,
(12:32):
which is the when I think of you know, when
when I actually read it, that's what I think of
as the Touring test where they put a machine and
a human being, um and sort of a blind test
with someone asking questions, and theoretically the person should be
able to ask the machine and the person questions and
they should be able to give answers, and the person
(12:54):
asking the question would be unable to determine which one
was real and which one was meant, I mean, which
one was the machine. It's hard to say when you're
using the word real is kind of tricky, but yeah,
I understand which was human and which was a human? Like? Yes, yes,
which one was human and which one was was a machine? Right?
(13:15):
So ideally you would have these these the computer and
the uh the other test subject, the human test subject
um separated. They would be completely isolated from the person
asking questions, and at the end of the list of questions,
you would ask the question er, all right, which one
was human, which one was computer? And if the questionnaire
was unable to identify the two roles better than chance.
(13:41):
So you know, you have to do this test many
times over right, right. If they were unable to identify
computer versus human uh to a point where it takes
chance out of the fact the whole factor, then um,
you can say that the computer passes the Turing test,
that the computer is, by all intents and purpose this
indistinguishable from a human being when it comes to communication. Now, um,
(14:06):
there have been some touring tests that that sort of
achieved this in a way, one of them being one
that focused on um, a computer that simulated the thought
processes of someone suffering from schizophrenia, and they had a
group of psychiatrists ask questions over, you know, through text
(14:30):
um to both a real person and this computer that
was simulating someone with schizophrenia and something like of them
weren't able to tell the difference. They weren't able to
reliably identify which one was computer which one was human.
So that's a that's right around the chance level, right,
so that you could say that that computer passes the
touring test. However, that is of course a very narrow
(14:52):
set of parameters, and some people have criticized the test
saying that, okay, but when you're getting to someone who
is operating on are a set of faculties that are
not considered the normal set, because schizophrenia is outside the norm,
then it wouldn't really The computer doesn't need to understand
what it's saying, right, The computer doesn't have to be
(15:13):
able to comprehend that the words it's putting together are
following a certain you know, pattern, are making sense. Um,
you could just as easily have a jumble of words.
The computer could randomly pair them up and create nonsensical sentences,
and it would be almost as effective because you're not
(15:33):
working with the full set of human faculties. Um. If
you were, then the presumably the percentage rate of identifying
the computer versus the human would be much different. You
would be able to probably accurately describe them, and much
more often because computers are not terribly good at carrying
(15:54):
on a truly human conversation, or at least not the
kind of conversations I have with other humans. Did you
did you ever here? Did you know of dr Spates? So, uh,
it's a sound blaster thing. The the old sound blaster
cards came with a software called dr Spates, So asked
Dr SPATESO. And it was this computer voice. You could
(16:16):
type questions to it. It would respond to you. It
would actually talk to you, and there were times where
it kind of felt a little uncanny that wow, that
was actually a really good response. But then it was
just a database full of responses and it would pick
whichever one was most likely going to apply to whatever
question you had typed in, So it wasn't really artificial intelligence.
(16:36):
But I remember that was probably my first encounter in
a personal level, apart from the movies. Well, one of
the things that surprised me as I was doing research
because I was familiar with Alan touring in the touring
test um, but I was a little surprised that Renee
des Cartes had actually made some suggestions. I have lyrics
(16:57):
going through my head. But no. In sixty eight, of course, again,
according to the Stanford Encyclopedia Philosophy, UM the cards said
that if there were a machine that could walk and
talk like you know, a person could. Um, I'm assuming
he didn't have some kind of time machine. Was guessing
that there will be androids in the future. But Um
(17:20):
basically said that these machines would need to be able
to put together a conversation like a person in order
to really be defined as intelligent. Um. But he said
that he didn't really believe that it was possible for
a machine to exhibit that kind of intelligence because they
would also need and I'm not quite sure what he
means here, all the organs necessary to live. I mean
(17:42):
to react to everything that they would encounter. I'm assuming
that there he's saying. You know, you wouldn't have skin,
so you wouldn't be able to go, oh, we have
that panics hot whorse, that would be a lot more. Again,
this would suggest again that he does not have a
time machine, because yeah, actually, now there are sensors that
you could embed in Yeah, there's actually there's there's so
(18:07):
much advancement in as far as being able to sense
the environment. Is concerned that we have some rudimentary artificial
intelligence examples out there, things that are able to uh
to examine and react to their environments. Um, things like
you know as Amo. As Amo, the robot from Honda
can walk around the room and recognize an obstacle in
(18:28):
its path and then reroute its path so that it
can get to its end point um by you know,
walking around or whatever. Uh it, But it still has limitations.
It can't it can't deal with anything completely new. It's
not capable of doing that. And even something like the
it's able to go up and downstairs, which was a
big deal, like it was able to balance while going
(18:49):
up and downstairs, right, Daleks can't. That's all that takes
to ruin the machinations of the Daleks. A staircases. Um,
although I've been told that can fly, yeah, but I mean,
come on a stairwell. It's not gonna fly up a
stairwell anyway. So the stairs have to be pre programmed
(19:14):
right into the Asimo. It can't. It can't encounter a
new staircase and be able to walk up or down
that staircase all on its own yet, but it could
encounter a new room and be able to walk from
one point to the other and recognize that there's something
in the way and move around it. So there are
limitations even now. But um, you know, we we're seeing
(19:34):
advancements all the time. And uh, I do think it's
just a question of when we get to the point
of something that is capable of learning from its environment,
like the Cornell example kind of proves that. Um, whether
or not it develops a personality is a totally different question.
And I actually think that the Decart example was fascinating.
(19:59):
I want or if perhaps part of the problem with
defining artificial intelligence is that we have a very you know,
we have a very narrow perspective of what intelligence is.
You know, we can't we're humans. We can't really conceive
of an intelligence outside of our own human intelligence in
the sense that there might be some way of having
intelligence that is so foreign to us that we would
(20:20):
not even recognize it as such. Yeah, we're we're basing
it on our own understanding of what intelligence is. You
have to there, there's no way we can't because we
are human beings. But that's that's a good point to make,
is that there could be let's say that ten years
down the road, we have an artificially intelligent device, but
we can't really recognize it as such because it's not
(20:41):
intelligent the same way human beings are. And I do
think there are artificial intelligences. Yeah, I've met a lot
of them, mostly on election day. Oh man. Now, I
mean but I think, you know, going back to your
to your Asimo example, Yeah, um, I I think they
are intelligent. The thing, the things that we manufacture that
(21:03):
have an artificial intelligence to them are artificially intelligent within
the boundaries that we set for them, like there are
you know, I've played games that have the ones that
are described as having good artificial intelligences, and the ones
that are that are really good are the ones that
seem to adapt to the way that you play. They say, Okay,
(21:24):
I know he's gonna come at me from this angle.
Now I'm going to do this to defend myself and
go in this direction. Um. But of course, if you
wanted it to make you a grill cheese sandwich, you know,
really that's not gonna help much. Yeah. The intelligence intelligence
is limited to the set of instructions that were given
to the intelligence at the very beginning, right, So Asimo
(21:44):
couldn't direct an orchestra, but it could climb a pair
a set of stairs, and then they programmed it to
conduct in order. Was just about to say conduct it did,
but it was actually it was actually um mimicking someone
else's movement, accorded someone else's movements, programmed that into Asimo.
So asthma was not that was that That was like
(22:06):
putting a tape into a VCR or a CD into
a CD player and pushing play. There was no way
for Asimo to depart from that series of movements. It
could not It couldn't interpret the music. It couldn't stop
and try and hold a note a little for a
little more time to get the biggest emotional impact of
the piece. It could only conduct at the the tempo
(22:30):
and the all the motions that were involved. Um that
we're programmed into it beforehand. So that's a very good example.
One thing that that Honda's robot will do. I mean,
since it is from Honda, it can reach in a chord.
Oh my gosh, uh Michael, um so that I see.
(22:51):
That was that was not Honda. I was gonna talk
a little bit about capture as well, and it's the
way it plays into artificial intelligence. Now, for those of
you who aren't familiar, capture, of course, is the uh
it's it's used a lot in verification and when you're
you know, signing up for a new account with something,
um it's quiggly alphabetical characters that look like they've been
(23:12):
type written around a piece of string or something. It's
it's some Usually it's a It can be either a
string of random characters or if you're lucky, it's a word.
Because some of these can get so difficult to understand
that you know, you can't like, is that a B
or is that a you know A Yeah, if it's
a word, you can at least you know, your brain
(23:32):
will put that together, which is as another good example,
like if a computer is not able to figure out
a word based upon a couple of you know, letters
in there, then obviously that shows that it fails that test.
So the idea mind capture is that it's supposed to
be a test that human beings can easily pass, but
computers cannot, And the purpose for capture is to try
(23:54):
and avoid having automated bots register tons and tons and
tons of spam accounts for whatever, you know, whatever the
thing is like. Ticketmaster is a good example. Let's say
you're buying tickets on Ticketmaster. There's a capture section where
you have to fill it out before you can complete
your order. This helps prevent scalpers from setting up an
(24:15):
automated program to buy all the tickets from for a
certain venue for a certain show, and then scalping the
heck out of those tickets. All right, so it makes
sense now, Um, there are people who are figuring out
ways to program computers to recognize captures, and in a
way you might say, oh, well, this is terrible because
it means that the security now has taken a back
(24:35):
step and now they're gonna have to figure out a
new way of doing this, which is gonna make it
even more difficult for humans to figure out the damn word. Right, Well,
but you're you're talking about. The silver lining is that
it means that it's an advance in artificial intelligence. So
on the one hand, computer security has gotten a little
more difficult. On the other hand, artificial intelligence has gotten
(24:55):
a little better. Now. Of course, this doesn't apply if
you happen to employ hundred people out in Indo, China
to manually go and type these captures in because that's
what a lot of you know, quote unquote hackers are
actually doing. They're not creating a program that understands capture.
They're just hiring someone who will work for pennies on
(25:16):
the hour to type these things out. Um, that's obviously
not artificial intelligence. That's just being a scumbag. Uh, because
there are better ways to help people in need than
to employ them to create junk mail accounts. Um, well
there goes my business model. Yes. So yeah, So that's
the whole idea behind the capture is that even when
(25:37):
it fails, it's still a success. It's just a success
in a different field. Alright. Then it's kind of it's
kind of a weird way of thinking of it though
you would think that would be sort of a negative
all the way around. And and you know, we've seen
other elements of artificial intelligence pop up in devices. You
have things like the collision detection in cars, where it
(25:57):
alerts you before you actually were to uh collide with something.
And then there's it appears that you're trying to write
a letter, Yes, there's Clippy Clippy, which is not really
that intelligent. No, it's artificially incredibly irritating. Actually, you know,
I haven't seen Clippy around. What's he doing these days?
(26:19):
Hopefully hard time because I hated that thing. Oh my gosh,
I give you a hard time. Yeah. Yeah, you type
in three words and it suddenly decided what you've tried
to do, and it's trying to be helpful even though
you didn't ask for help and you didn't want it.
I hate Clippy. It appears that you're trying to extort
some money. It appears that you're a Nigerian prince. Who is?
(26:41):
That's just thanks Clippy, you've made scamming people so much easier.
But artificial intelligence, it's one of those truly multidiscipline type
of uh fields, right, I mean it has it has
everything that it's everything from philosophy, computer science and euroscience. Uh,
I mean biology even because there are people who are
(27:06):
staying the human brain and trying to figure out how
that works and apply that somehow to computer science. That's
the tricky tricky thing because what what we know about
the computer the human brain is so incredibly it's such
a tiny fraction of what there is to know from
what we can tell at any rate. I mean, there's
so much we don't understand. What is the mind versus
(27:28):
the brain? We can't answer that question, which is kind
of ironic when you think about it. That would be
philosophy right there, Yes, philosophy, but it's also biology. I mean,
it's the same thing. It crosses over. The mind versus
the brain is one of those questions that various disciplines
have been trying to answer for for generations. And um
(27:48):
there's some who who believe that a and artificial intelligence
could develop a mind, even if we don't ourselves understand
how the mind works. If we build a brain that's
good enough, a mind could spontaneously generate from that brain.
If the brain was effective enough and could could make
its own decisions, it could develop its own mind. This
(28:12):
is completely theoretical because we don't have the ability to
make a device that complex right now to test this out.
But it's also kind of terrifying because then we arrive
at the scenario you mentioned at the beginning. The intelligence
takes a look around, looks at what it needs, decides
whether or not humans are needed. If humans are not needed,
(28:34):
or should they be eliminated. If they should be eliminated,
what's the most effective way of doing this. If it's
got the self recursive improvement, it's going to figure out
better and better ways of getting rid of people until
you don't have people anymore, or you get assimilated and
you become part of the borg. Well, you know, that's
a cheery outlook on it. Or it absorbs our intelligence
in some way and we all become virtual people and
(28:57):
are fleshy, meaty bar These eventually die and decompose and
say farewell and shovel off the mortal coil. But our
intelligence lives on. Now that's kind of an interesting thought.
It also is kind of depressing because he realized that
it's not the intelligence that's living in you right now.
It would be a copy of you. You know, I'm
(29:19):
guessing that when Alexander wrote to us that she had
no idea whatsoever that we were going to get into
this deep conversation about this stuff, that's because I'm not
sure that I and my brain is kind of hurting
at this point. Yeah, it's well, this is a this
is a tough topic. Now we're all to answer Alexandra's
question artificial intelligence, to some extent, is already in a
(29:43):
host of different products, from cars to even things like smartphones.
Smartphones able to detect where you are, how fast you're moving,
all this kind of stuff. Um, it hasn't gotten to
the point where they can start to make their own
decisions or or improve upon pastic sperience. But I don't
think we're that far off. There are people who believe
(30:05):
that artificial intelligence may maybe there may be a breakthrough
as early as next year. Of course they said that
last year, right, Well, actually in two thousand and seven
they said any time between three and seven years, So
next year would be the first year for that major
breakthrough and then for the singularity you're looking at around
(30:26):
depending upon who you ask. So uh, I mean that
whether we actually hit the singularity, A lot of that
depends on if other things hold true, like Moore's law. Yeah,
but of course you know, Ray Kurtzweil and others are
counting on it. Yeah, they've they've got an entire lecture
series devoted to it. And they are very smart people,
I would say, far smarter than I am. So it
(30:49):
may be that they're onto something. Um, it's hard for
me to say because it's you know, I also look
at other extremely complex machinery that doesn't yet work. Yeah,
like you know large Hadron collider. Well, there are theories
as to why that's We're going to get into that,
though we can't. We can't talk about that. That's coming
(31:09):
up in an upcoming episode. I wonder if artificial intelligence
is behind that. Sounds like a conspiracy to me. That's
a hint. All right, Well, let's uh, I think are
do you have anything else to add on artificial intelligence?
This was a very philosophical discussion, very different from our
normal episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it. We don't
plan on doing a ton of philosophical discussions, but it's
(31:31):
gonna do something a little different. It is. It's nice
thought experiment, which, as it turns out, very important in
artificial intelligence. But now that we've exhausted that topic, at
least as far as our understanding goes, you could you
could take entire college courses in artificial I mean, there's far, far,
far more out. Yeah, this is not even scratching the surface.
(31:51):
That would be an insult to the field of artificial intelligence.
But it does now wrap things up, which leads us
to our second bout of listener May This listener mail
comes from Thomas, and Thomas has this to say, Hello,
Chris and Jonathan. I just recently listened to your podcast
on a r g S and I was wondering if
(32:12):
I could get a few pointers. I'm getting started and
participating in one. So r g s are the alternate
reality games, which we talked about several episodes ago. This.
Two sites I would recommend anyone go to if they
are interested in getting into alternate reality games are www
Dot a r g N dot com or www dot
(32:34):
unfiction dot com. Both of those are good place to
start if you want to look into alternate reality games
and kind of get an idea of which ones you
want to play. Some of the old games are still
semi active, so you could actually play through parts of
the game now. Granted, anything that realizes on interaction between
the game master and the players that's long since over right,
(32:57):
so you can't you can't play that part. But the
puzzles that are online you may still be able to
play through, or at least be able to see what
the puzzles were, how people work them out, get an
idea for the way the games are played. Um. Both
of those sites also list active games. When I looked,
there weren't a whole lot of active games right now,
but that could change at any time. So thanks Thomas.
(33:20):
If any of you have any questions, suggestions, criticisms, comments,
that kind of thing, right to us tech Stuff at
how stuff works dot com. We have a lot of
articles on the site that relate to artificial intelligence. Uh
not one specifically about how AI works, but how it
relates to things like robots, video games, all that sort
of stuff. I recommend you check those out. That's at
how stuff works dot com. Remember we have a live
(33:42):
show every Tuesday one pm Eastern. Check that out again. Blogs,
So you would look at the House of Works dot
com on the right hand side there's the link of
the blogs. That's where you're gonna find that information. And
Chris and I will talk to you again really soon
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
it how stuff works dot com And be sure to
(34:03):
check out the new tech stuff blog now on the
House stuff Works homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented
two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. You've heard
the rumors before, perhaps and whispers written between the lines
of the textbooks. Conspiracies, paranormal events, all those things that
(00:24):
disappear from the official explanations. Tune in and learn more
of the stuff they don't want you to know in
this video podcast from how stuff works dot com. Hello everybody,
and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Pouette,
(00:45):
and I'm the tech editor here at how stuff works
dot com. Sitting across from me as usual, is Senior
Ryan Jonathan Strickland's up, y'all very nice, changed up a
little bit, Okay, I'm fine with that. So before we
get started, I just wanted to mentioned something. I saw
this email going out about a new show that's coming
up on the Science Channel. Yeah, it's called The Road
(01:07):
to Punkin Chunkin. And then immediately it's followed by punkin Chunkin.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you saw this email too. Yeah.
It's a Thanksgiving night here in the United States, so yeah,
starts at eight. That's the Road to Punkin Chunkin, followed
by Punkin Chunkin at nine. And if you don't know
what this is about, it's really about designing machines that
(01:28):
can throw a pumpkin a really far distance. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
They used to do that with with tribute sches and
stuff like that, but now they have these air powered cannons. Yeah,
it's gonna be pretty crazy. So, uh, you should definitely
check it out. I'm gonna be watching it myself. I
think there's nothing I like more than a little pumpkin destruction. Awesome. Well,
(01:51):
so what are we gonna talk about today? Today's topic
comes to us courtesy of a little listener mail. Well,
all right, then this is list Your mail comes from
our ninth grader listener named Alexandra. I'm sure we have
other ninth graders, but this one in particular road to us.
Thank you, Alexandra, and here is the message. Hey you guys,
(02:13):
I have a suggestion for a topic, Artificial intelligence. My
favorite show is Night Writer two thousand eight. Kit the
Talking Car is said to have the most advanced AI
in the world. Is AI in cars and other devices
coming soon? Will they have personalities? Thanks for a great podcast.
P s. I like the eighties Night Writer too. So
you're talking about night Writer, you're talking about KIT, which
of course is the Night Industries two thousand artificially intelligent car.
(02:38):
By the way, do you remember what Kit's arch nemesis
car was called? Oh, we'll see I now now. I
didn't remember what it stood for. I knew that it
was car, Yes, Car K A r R. It stands
for Night Automated Roving Robot. Do you remember the main
character's name? Besides Kit and Night Writer met the main
character Michael, Yes, Michael Night. Who do you remember what
(03:01):
his name was before became Michael Knight? Oh? No, actually
I don't. Michael Arthur Long undercover agents shot in the face.
He had to be rehabilitated. They rebuilt his face, gave
it David Hasselhoss face for some reason. He's huge in
Germany and U. He became Michael Knight because it was
Night Industries. Did I just have one question for you?
(03:22):
Did you did you look that up? Or did you
know that off the top of your head? I wrote
all that down from memory. I like Alexandra, I was
a bit of a fan of the nineteen eighties night Writers. Well,
I thought I was, but apparently I was a lower
case F fan and not an upper case I also
wanted to throw out throw out the phrase I was saying,
the the little joke I made to you before we
(03:45):
started recording this podcast, Michael, let's drive to Congress and
if any of you know why I said it that
way and what the whole Congress thing is, reference to
write me tech stuff at how stuff works dot com.
First person to get it right gets a kudos. Just
not a granola bar. Not a granola bar. I mean,
(04:06):
if I encounter you on the street and I happen
to have a granola bar, I will be happy to
hand it over to you. If I don't have a
granola bar, we're kind of ada luck on that one.
So this brings us to our topic granola bars. No,
I'm sorry, artificial intelligence. I got off on a tangent there,
So artificial intelligence now, she asked, is artificial intelligence coming
(04:28):
to other devices and cars as well? And will they
have personalities? Um, here's the interesting thing about artificial intelligence.
The definition is somewhat vague. For example, Chris, how would
you define artificial intelligence? I mean, nope, there are no
right or wrong answers. Just when you hear the term,
(04:48):
what is it that you think of? Well, you know,
of course there's the movie Okay, yes, there's the film
that was started by Stanley Kubrick completed by Steven Spielberg
that lasted thirty minut it's too long and should have
ended with a Little Boy in the Ocean spoiler alert.
But beyond that, you know this, This is the effect
of Odyssey of the Mind on my brain, because I'm
(05:11):
trained to think of everything but the actual answer, Um, no,
I want I When I think of artificial intelligence, um,
you know, actually, one of the first things that comes
to mind is games because people talk about the AI
in a particular game, all the AI and this game
is really good. Yeah, and uh, you know of course
robots mostly androids, things like that. Yeah, but yeah, I
(05:36):
mean those things and and and walking talking. You know.
It's always the movie version of our official intelligence where
there's you know, something and of course it's evil. It's
usually evil example, you know, and it's thinking, and it's
it's decided that we're irrelevant and it's going to kill
us all. I mean that, isn't it nice? It's pretty
much gonna happen. But no, no, no, so here's here's
(05:59):
here's my ulswer. Yeah, but to know that it's coming
and it will kill me. Yes, my Hunter Civic will
eventually do me in. Um No, here's what I think
of when I think artificial intelligence. I think of a
an artificial construct. So some sort of man made thing
that is capable of sensing its environment, reacting to its environment,
(06:22):
and learning from its experiences. Now, to me, the learning
part is the most important because if it's if it's
only taking in it's uh, you know, some sort of
sensory input and then reacting to it, there's not really
any thinking going on there. I mean, essentially, you're just
it's it's stimulus response, right, Yeah, And that's pretty much
(06:43):
how I carry out my day. I just some of
us are a little higher functioning than Chris, and we
we occasionally spare a thought or two for something. Um No,
Chris is actually a very intelligent person. I I people
get on to me about picking on you. You know that, right,
I don't. Chris and I are actually good buddies here. Yeah, yeah,
(07:04):
so at any rate, at any rate, So yeah, I think, uh,
I think learning is an important element in artificial intelligence,
so that not only are you able to react to
something that's in your environment, but you learn from that
experience and you are able to handle similar experiences in
a better way in the future. So, for example, you
encounter if if you have an artificially intelligent construct that
(07:25):
is UH susceptible to melting and it encounters a heat
source that is higher than it's melting point, and it
detects this and then backs away and then has to
try and UH factor in a route around this heat
source so that it can continue doing whatever it was
it was doing beforehand. UM. After encountering that, it might
(07:48):
be able to build on that experience and be able
to solve a similar problem in half the time, and
ideally you have this increminal improvement. UM. It's also called
self recursive improvement, where you have an experience, you learn
from it, and you are able to do it more
efficiently or effectively, however you want to quantify it in
(08:08):
the future. So right now, using that definition, we don't
really have a truly good example of artificial intelligence. There's
some that are really close, UM, but there's nothing out
there that's that's like a computer that can understand how
computers work and therefore design its own successor to be
(08:32):
a more powerful version of itself. So um, yeah, no, uh,
what was the computer in Hitchhiker's Guide Deep Thought? So
deep Thought? Yeah, deep Thought? And uh in Hitticker's Guide
to the Galaxy, there's this computer called deep Thought that
is so intelligent that it is able to come up
with the answer to life, the universe, and everything. It
(08:54):
is not able to come up with the question it's
the answer to a question, but it's not. But it
can actually get the question. To get the question, it
has to build a computer even smarter than itself, but
it's able to do that. So it can't solve the problem,
but it can build a tool that can solve the
problem that ends up being the planet Earth in that
in that series of books. Now, that's actually an idea
(09:16):
that's being explored in computer science. It's an idea of
can we build a machine that can understand how machines
work and therefore build a better version of the machine
because it can make these calculations far faster and more
effectively than any human can. And once you reach that point,
that's when we hit what we've We've talked about this
in the past. We've talked about in another podcast. But
(09:37):
the singularity, which is where you've reached the point where
machines or or even humans. It doesn't have to be
a machine. It could be like somehow we have biologically
altered ourselves so that we can do this to ourselves.
But we the improvements come so quickly that uh, that
there's no way to distinguish one moment from the next
as far as technological advancement goes, because it's just going
(10:00):
easing fast and we've reached a brand new reality, at
least as far as our perspective is concerned. Uh, to
the outside observer, it wouldn't be quite the same. And
I did mention that we have some stuff that's coming close.
The one I wanted to talk about just mention, uh
was the Cornell Research um UH project where they had
(10:21):
the computer that analyzed the pendulum. Do you remember reading
the story There was a new story. It was back
earlier this year. There was a group of Cornell computer scientists.
They had designed a computer and all the computer was
doing was observing the movements of a pendulum and then
from those movements working out the laws of physics, so
(10:43):
it would observe the way the pendulum moved, the speed
at which it moved, how much it slowed down, and
it started to work out the laws of thermodynamics. It's
you know, physical laws, classical physics. And it turned out
to be really good at it. It didn't get it
exactly right at the very beginning, but it kept observing
just like humans would. It kept observing the the phenomena
(11:04):
and then making guesses and and then testing those guesses,
throwing out anything that didn't fit over time, and keeping
everything that did fit, and eventually it was able to
work out the basic laws of physics. Now that I
had not read that. That's a pretty cool example of
artificial intelligence, and the idea that this was able to
observe something in its environment and draw conclusions from it.
(11:27):
Um Now, it had been programmed to be able to observe,
so I mean, it wasn't like it had developed capabilities
beyond its programming. I think that's another sign of artificial intelligence.
When you've created something that can go beyond what you
had originally programmed it for. That's another sign of intelligence.
You know a lot of people think that used to
(11:48):
the if you will, the classical definition of artificial intelligence.
You know, the touring tests. Yes, the Touring tests Alan Touring,
and I was a little surprised you didn't start with him,
to be honest, Yeah, I I thought about it, um,
because this is a when you get to artificial intelligence,
it really is a philosophical matter. It's not just technological,
it's not just computer science. It is philosophy. Well, you know, uh,
(12:10):
when I was doing research for the podcast, I found
a great resource at Stanford. And it's funny because when
I think of Alan Touring, I think of computer science,
but it's actually the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy where I
encountered his thoughts on artificial intelligence and the imitation game,
(12:32):
which is the when I think of you know, when
when I actually read it, that's what I think of
as the Touring test where they put a machine and
a human being, um and sort of a blind test
with someone asking questions, and theoretically the person should be
able to ask the machine and the person questions and
they should be able to give answers, and the person
(12:54):
asking the question would be unable to determine which one
was real and which one was meant, I mean, which
one was the machine. It's hard to say when you're
using the word real is kind of tricky, but yeah,
I understand which was human and which was a human? Like? Yes, yes,
which one was human and which one was was a machine? Right?
(13:15):
So ideally you would have these these the computer and
the uh the other test subject, the human test subject
um separated. They would be completely isolated from the person
asking questions, and at the end of the list of questions,
you would ask the question er, all right, which one
was human, which one was computer? And if the questionnaire
was unable to identify the two roles better than chance.
(13:41):
So you know, you have to do this test many
times over right, right. If they were unable to identify
computer versus human uh to a point where it takes
chance out of the fact the whole factor, then um,
you can say that the computer passes the Turing test,
that the computer is, by all intents and purpose this
indistinguishable from a human being when it comes to communication. Now, um,
(14:06):
there have been some touring tests that that sort of
achieved this in a way, one of them being one
that focused on um, a computer that simulated the thought
processes of someone suffering from schizophrenia, and they had a
group of psychiatrists ask questions over, you know, through text
(14:30):
um to both a real person and this computer that
was simulating someone with schizophrenia and something like of them
weren't able to tell the difference. They weren't able to
reliably identify which one was computer which one was human.
So that's a that's right around the chance level, right,
so that you could say that that computer passes the
touring test. However, that is of course a very narrow
(14:52):
set of parameters, and some people have criticized the test
saying that, okay, but when you're getting to someone who
is operating on are a set of faculties that are
not considered the normal set, because schizophrenia is outside the norm,
then it wouldn't really The computer doesn't need to understand
what it's saying, right, The computer doesn't have to be
(15:13):
able to comprehend that the words it's putting together are
following a certain you know, pattern, are making sense. Um,
you could just as easily have a jumble of words.
The computer could randomly pair them up and create nonsensical sentences,
and it would be almost as effective because you're not
(15:33):
working with the full set of human faculties. Um. If
you were, then the presumably the percentage rate of identifying
the computer versus the human would be much different. You
would be able to probably accurately describe them, and much
more often because computers are not terribly good at carrying
(15:54):
on a truly human conversation, or at least not the
kind of conversations I have with other humans. Did you
did you ever here? Did you know of dr Spates? So, uh,
it's a sound blaster thing. The the old sound blaster
cards came with a software called dr Spates, So asked
Dr SPATESO. And it was this computer voice. You could
(16:16):
type questions to it. It would respond to you. It
would actually talk to you, and there were times where
it kind of felt a little uncanny that wow, that
was actually a really good response. But then it was
just a database full of responses and it would pick
whichever one was most likely going to apply to whatever
question you had typed in, So it wasn't really artificial intelligence.
(16:36):
But I remember that was probably my first encounter in
a personal level, apart from the movies. Well, one of
the things that surprised me as I was doing research
because I was familiar with Alan touring in the touring
test um, but I was a little surprised that Renee
des Cartes had actually made some suggestions. I have lyrics
(16:57):
going through my head. But no. In sixty eight, of course, again,
according to the Stanford Encyclopedia Philosophy, UM the cards said
that if there were a machine that could walk and
talk like you know, a person could. Um, I'm assuming
he didn't have some kind of time machine. Was guessing
that there will be androids in the future. But Um
(17:20):
basically said that these machines would need to be able
to put together a conversation like a person in order
to really be defined as intelligent. Um. But he said
that he didn't really believe that it was possible for
a machine to exhibit that kind of intelligence because they
would also need and I'm not quite sure what he
means here, all the organs necessary to live. I mean
(17:42):
to react to everything that they would encounter. I'm assuming
that there he's saying. You know, you wouldn't have skin,
so you wouldn't be able to go, oh, we have
that panics hot whorse, that would be a lot more. Again,
this would suggest again that he does not have a
time machine, because yeah, actually, now there are sensors that
you could embed in Yeah, there's actually there's there's so
(18:07):
much advancement in as far as being able to sense
the environment. Is concerned that we have some rudimentary artificial
intelligence examples out there, things that are able to uh
to examine and react to their environments. Um, things like
you know as Amo. As Amo, the robot from Honda
can walk around the room and recognize an obstacle in
(18:28):
its path and then reroute its path so that it
can get to its end point um by you know,
walking around or whatever. Uh it, But it still has limitations.
It can't it can't deal with anything completely new. It's
not capable of doing that. And even something like the
it's able to go up and downstairs, which was a
big deal, like it was able to balance while going
(18:49):
up and downstairs, right, Daleks can't. That's all that takes
to ruin the machinations of the Daleks. A staircases. Um,
although I've been told that can fly, yeah, but I mean,
come on a stairwell. It's not gonna fly up a
stairwell anyway. So the stairs have to be pre programmed
(19:14):
right into the Asimo. It can't. It can't encounter a
new staircase and be able to walk up or down
that staircase all on its own yet, but it could
encounter a new room and be able to walk from
one point to the other and recognize that there's something
in the way and move around it. So there are
limitations even now. But um, you know, we we're seeing
(19:34):
advancements all the time. And uh, I do think it's
just a question of when we get to the point
of something that is capable of learning from its environment,
like the Cornell example kind of proves that. Um, whether
or not it develops a personality is a totally different question.
And I actually think that the Decart example was fascinating.
(19:59):
I want or if perhaps part of the problem with
defining artificial intelligence is that we have a very you know,
we have a very narrow perspective of what intelligence is.
You know, we can't we're humans. We can't really conceive
of an intelligence outside of our own human intelligence in
the sense that there might be some way of having
intelligence that is so foreign to us that we would
(20:20):
not even recognize it as such. Yeah, we're we're basing
it on our own understanding of what intelligence is. You
have to there, there's no way we can't because we
are human beings. But that's that's a good point to make,
is that there could be let's say that ten years
down the road, we have an artificially intelligent device, but
we can't really recognize it as such because it's not
(20:41):
intelligent the same way human beings are. And I do
think there are artificial intelligences. Yeah, I've met a lot
of them, mostly on election day. Oh man. Now, I
mean but I think, you know, going back to your
to your Asimo example, Yeah, um, I I think they
are intelligent. The thing, the things that we manufacture that
(21:03):
have an artificial intelligence to them are artificially intelligent within
the boundaries that we set for them, like there are
you know, I've played games that have the ones that
are described as having good artificial intelligences, and the ones
that are that are really good are the ones that
seem to adapt to the way that you play. They say, Okay,
(21:24):
I know he's gonna come at me from this angle.
Now I'm going to do this to defend myself and
go in this direction. Um. But of course, if you
wanted it to make you a grill cheese sandwich, you know,
really that's not gonna help much. Yeah. The intelligence intelligence
is limited to the set of instructions that were given
to the intelligence at the very beginning, right, So Asimo
(21:44):
couldn't direct an orchestra, but it could climb a pair
a set of stairs, and then they programmed it to
conduct in order. Was just about to say conduct it did,
but it was actually it was actually um mimicking someone
else's movement, accorded someone else's movements, programmed that into Asimo.
So asthma was not that was that That was like
(22:06):
putting a tape into a VCR or a CD into
a CD player and pushing play. There was no way
for Asimo to depart from that series of movements. It
could not It couldn't interpret the music. It couldn't stop
and try and hold a note a little for a
little more time to get the biggest emotional impact of
the piece. It could only conduct at the the tempo
(22:30):
and the all the motions that were involved. Um that
we're programmed into it beforehand. So that's a very good example.
One thing that that Honda's robot will do. I mean,
since it is from Honda, it can reach in a chord.
Oh my gosh, uh Michael, um so that I see.
(22:51):
That was that was not Honda. I was gonna talk
a little bit about capture as well, and it's the
way it plays into artificial intelligence. Now, for those of
you who aren't familiar, capture, of course, is the uh
it's it's used a lot in verification and when you're
you know, signing up for a new account with something,
um it's quiggly alphabetical characters that look like they've been
(23:12):
type written around a piece of string or something. It's
it's some Usually it's a It can be either a
string of random characters or if you're lucky, it's a word.
Because some of these can get so difficult to understand
that you know, you can't like, is that a B
or is that a you know A Yeah, if it's
a word, you can at least you know, your brain
(23:32):
will put that together, which is as another good example,
like if a computer is not able to figure out
a word based upon a couple of you know, letters
in there, then obviously that shows that it fails that test.
So the idea mind capture is that it's supposed to
be a test that human beings can easily pass, but
computers cannot, And the purpose for capture is to try
(23:54):
and avoid having automated bots register tons and tons and
tons of spam accounts for whatever, you know, whatever the
thing is like. Ticketmaster is a good example. Let's say
you're buying tickets on Ticketmaster. There's a capture section where
you have to fill it out before you can complete
your order. This helps prevent scalpers from setting up an
(24:15):
automated program to buy all the tickets from for a
certain venue for a certain show, and then scalping the
heck out of those tickets. All right, so it makes
sense now, Um, there are people who are figuring out
ways to program computers to recognize captures, and in a
way you might say, oh, well, this is terrible because
it means that the security now has taken a back
(24:35):
step and now they're gonna have to figure out a
new way of doing this, which is gonna make it
even more difficult for humans to figure out the damn word. Right, Well,
but you're you're talking about. The silver lining is that
it means that it's an advance in artificial intelligence. So
on the one hand, computer security has gotten a little
more difficult. On the other hand, artificial intelligence has gotten
(24:55):
a little better. Now. Of course, this doesn't apply if
you happen to employ hundred people out in Indo, China
to manually go and type these captures in because that's
what a lot of you know, quote unquote hackers are
actually doing. They're not creating a program that understands capture.
They're just hiring someone who will work for pennies on
(25:16):
the hour to type these things out. Um, that's obviously
not artificial intelligence. That's just being a scumbag. Uh, because
there are better ways to help people in need than
to employ them to create junk mail accounts. Um, well
there goes my business model. Yes. So yeah, So that's
the whole idea behind the capture is that even when
(25:37):
it fails, it's still a success. It's just a success
in a different field. Alright. Then it's kind of it's
kind of a weird way of thinking of it though
you would think that would be sort of a negative
all the way around. And and you know, we've seen
other elements of artificial intelligence pop up in devices. You
have things like the collision detection in cars, where it
(25:57):
alerts you before you actually were to uh collide with something.
And then there's it appears that you're trying to write
a letter, Yes, there's Clippy Clippy, which is not really
that intelligent. No, it's artificially incredibly irritating. Actually, you know,
I haven't seen Clippy around. What's he doing these days?
(26:19):
Hopefully hard time because I hated that thing. Oh my gosh,
I give you a hard time. Yeah. Yeah, you type
in three words and it suddenly decided what you've tried
to do, and it's trying to be helpful even though
you didn't ask for help and you didn't want it.
I hate Clippy. It appears that you're trying to extort
some money. It appears that you're a Nigerian prince. Who is?
(26:41):
That's just thanks Clippy, you've made scamming people so much easier.
But artificial intelligence, it's one of those truly multidiscipline type
of uh fields, right, I mean it has it has
everything that it's everything from philosophy, computer science and euroscience. Uh,
I mean biology even because there are people who are
(27:06):
staying the human brain and trying to figure out how
that works and apply that somehow to computer science. That's
the tricky tricky thing because what what we know about
the computer the human brain is so incredibly it's such
a tiny fraction of what there is to know from
what we can tell at any rate. I mean, there's
so much we don't understand. What is the mind versus
(27:28):
the brain? We can't answer that question, which is kind
of ironic when you think about it. That would be
philosophy right there, Yes, philosophy, but it's also biology. I mean,
it's the same thing. It crosses over. The mind versus
the brain is one of those questions that various disciplines
have been trying to answer for for generations. And um
(27:48):
there's some who who believe that a and artificial intelligence
could develop a mind, even if we don't ourselves understand
how the mind works. If we build a brain that's
good enough, a mind could spontaneously generate from that brain.
If the brain was effective enough and could could make
its own decisions, it could develop its own mind. This
(28:12):
is completely theoretical because we don't have the ability to
make a device that complex right now to test this out.
But it's also kind of terrifying because then we arrive
at the scenario you mentioned at the beginning. The intelligence
takes a look around, looks at what it needs, decides
whether or not humans are needed. If humans are not needed,
(28:34):
or should they be eliminated. If they should be eliminated,
what's the most effective way of doing this. If it's
got the self recursive improvement, it's going to figure out
better and better ways of getting rid of people until
you don't have people anymore, or you get assimilated and
you become part of the borg. Well, you know, that's
a cheery outlook on it. Or it absorbs our intelligence
in some way and we all become virtual people and
(28:57):
are fleshy, meaty bar These eventually die and decompose and
say farewell and shovel off the mortal coil. But our
intelligence lives on. Now that's kind of an interesting thought.
It also is kind of depressing because he realized that
it's not the intelligence that's living in you right now.
It would be a copy of you. You know, I'm
(29:19):
guessing that when Alexander wrote to us that she had
no idea whatsoever that we were going to get into
this deep conversation about this stuff, that's because I'm not
sure that I and my brain is kind of hurting
at this point. Yeah, it's well, this is a this
is a tough topic. Now we're all to answer Alexandra's
question artificial intelligence, to some extent, is already in a
(29:43):
host of different products, from cars to even things like smartphones.
Smartphones able to detect where you are, how fast you're moving,
all this kind of stuff. Um, it hasn't gotten to
the point where they can start to make their own
decisions or or improve upon pastic sperience. But I don't
think we're that far off. There are people who believe
(30:05):
that artificial intelligence may maybe there may be a breakthrough
as early as next year. Of course they said that
last year, right, Well, actually in two thousand and seven
they said any time between three and seven years, So
next year would be the first year for that major
breakthrough and then for the singularity you're looking at around
(30:26):
depending upon who you ask. So uh, I mean that
whether we actually hit the singularity, A lot of that
depends on if other things hold true, like Moore's law. Yeah,
but of course you know, Ray Kurtzweil and others are
counting on it. Yeah, they've they've got an entire lecture
series devoted to it. And they are very smart people,
I would say, far smarter than I am. So it
(30:49):
may be that they're onto something. Um, it's hard for
me to say because it's you know, I also look
at other extremely complex machinery that doesn't yet work. Yeah,
like you know large Hadron collider. Well, there are theories
as to why that's We're going to get into that,
though we can't. We can't talk about that. That's coming
(31:09):
up in an upcoming episode. I wonder if artificial intelligence
is behind that. Sounds like a conspiracy to me. That's
a hint. All right, Well, let's uh, I think are
do you have anything else to add on artificial intelligence?
This was a very philosophical discussion, very different from our
normal episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it. We don't
plan on doing a ton of philosophical discussions, but it's
(31:31):
gonna do something a little different. It is. It's nice
thought experiment, which, as it turns out, very important in
artificial intelligence. But now that we've exhausted that topic, at
least as far as our understanding goes, you could you
could take entire college courses in artificial I mean, there's far, far,
far more out. Yeah, this is not even scratching the surface.
(31:51):
That would be an insult to the field of artificial intelligence.
But it does now wrap things up, which leads us
to our second bout of listener May This listener mail
comes from Thomas, and Thomas has this to say, Hello,
Chris and Jonathan. I just recently listened to your podcast
on a r g S and I was wondering if
(32:12):
I could get a few pointers. I'm getting started and
participating in one. So r g s are the alternate
reality games, which we talked about several episodes ago. This.
Two sites I would recommend anyone go to if they
are interested in getting into alternate reality games are www
Dot a r g N dot com or www dot
(32:34):
unfiction dot com. Both of those are good place to
start if you want to look into alternate reality games
and kind of get an idea of which ones you
want to play. Some of the old games are still
semi active, so you could actually play through parts of
the game now. Granted, anything that realizes on interaction between
the game master and the players that's long since over right,
(32:57):
so you can't you can't play that part. But the
puzzles that are online you may still be able to
play through, or at least be able to see what
the puzzles were, how people work them out, get an
idea for the way the games are played. Um. Both
of those sites also list active games. When I looked,
there weren't a whole lot of active games right now,
but that could change at any time. So thanks Thomas.
(33:20):
If any of you have any questions, suggestions, criticisms, comments,
that kind of thing, right to us tech Stuff at
how stuff works dot com. We have a lot of
articles on the site that relate to artificial intelligence. Uh
not one specifically about how AI works, but how it
relates to things like robots, video games, all that sort
of stuff. I recommend you check those out. That's at
how stuff works dot com. Remember we have a live
(33:42):
show every Tuesday one pm Eastern. Check that out again. Blogs,
So you would look at the House of Works dot
com on the right hand side there's the link of
the blogs. That's where you're gonna find that information. And
Chris and I will talk to you again really soon
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
it how stuff works dot com And be sure to
(34:03):
check out the new tech stuff blog now on the
House stuff Works homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented
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TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
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