Years ago I read stats about the number of books published annually in Germany before and after the invention of the printing press. The rise of published books was steep reaching 5000 very quickly. The introduction of artificial intelligence to personal computers and the rise in the scope of its use should be even quicker and sharper than that of the printing press. Artificial intelligence in common use is likely to be far more socially and economically revolutionary even than Gutenberg’s ‘machine’ .
The Intel corporation’s next generation of mobile computer chips; generation 14, is designed to support artificial intelligence. Maybe the motivation was initially for selling chips to gamers, yet A.I. for pc’s will draft incredible numbers of program developments to create software for A.I. capable hardware in support of not only games. A.I. programs for business, science education and economics will be the surge that will change the economics of the world.
Yes of course artificial intelligence will be used for evil as well as good. Human nature and especially of that of political leadership is good and evil. Proprietary political cults seek to control macro-economics to benefit special social classes. In a real sense they are intellectual Luddites that restrict the application of technology in economics in order to render technology of service to themselves. In the 1990s when President Clinton arranged the post Soviet political configuration with Boris Yeltsin he extracted a steep cost on Russia in effect emasculating recrudescent Russia and redistributing Ukraine and Crimea to the west as a finders fee he also put down the Japanese chip industry that was presenting an appearance of challenging the U.S.A. for global leadership in the field. That advantage continued to the present yet one might wonder if that advantage for the west was actually the optimal scenario for development of micro-transistor processing technology. Paradoxically the west outsources its advantages to foreign interests with lower labor costs eventually anyway as has tended to occur with China receiving most of the outsourced industry. One of the notable Toynbee traits of developed economic establishments is the inertial unwillingness to change from an existing political and business model to a newer, better one. It is a two-edged sword as well that requires political and historical wisdom for leadership to implement successfully keeping in mind the axiom; “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”.
The hardware to support the appearance of A.I. software so soon with that time upon us this year makes me wonder about how the software will work. I would guess that the first sort of programs to be written would function generally like artificial intelligence receptionists and A.I. community coordinators. Receptionist-coordinators would be the main interface with a human user and understand his/her language use. It would have some capacity to accomplish tasks and make internet searches. It would host other artificial intelligence programs developed to accomplish specific tasks in business, education, economics, science and so forth.
The human mind may serve as a paradigm for designing artificial intelligence. Human consciousness tends to function with word-phrases of meaning occurring in time within a self-aware window. Human consciousness interprets information input from the external world, yet may simultaneously produce images, symbols, numbers, sounds etc from memory to overlay the input images within consciousness. A human consciousness may direct it’s subconscious to search for a particular vague memory on a topic it cannot consciously recall in its entirety and the subconscious may later pop the answer to the awareness of the conscious mind. The way that process works is something of a mystery.
An artificial intelligence program may have the equivalent of a conscious mind; the direct information it is given as a task to solve. It will have a data bank to understand the meaning of the verbal, symbolic, or mathematical input comprising the task. If the program can search its deep memory data bank; the equivalent of the subconscious mind of a human, it need have an algorithm directing it how to search and what to search for. One might expect it to use a key word search or a morpheme or phoneme search to sort through memory, yet that won’t always work.
A computer algorithm need have a way to imitate the subconscious process of finding the correct information without having a direct technical search tool to accomplish it. That is it might need to have a way to search for the concept itself without possessing a spelling phrase search tool associated with it. The writing of computer code for that is perhaps not too difficult of a challenge. The implementation of concept association searches for artificial intelligence programs implies that the construction of synthetic associations as one might expect occurs in solving puzzles in physics or in making inventions develop could follow.
I would think the cloud will have numerous on-line freeware to compete with private A.I. software that users purchase. One of the problems with on-line programs is their leakage of data to corporate power that is a direct economic rival of each citizen of the nation that does not own shares of that corporation or its ad hoc, meta-corporate godfather. It is somewhat humorous that meta-corporate godfathers may themselves in actuality soon become and A.I. or a community of A.I.’s in virtual business war with rival meta-corporate business A.I.s. Thus many, or millions may prefer local A.I. software contained on their own pc.
Competition will be the driver for the swift proliferation of A.I. Nations slow to take up A.I. may fall behind in numerous cutting edge business developments as well as military technology evolution. AN increase in human knowledge in biology, physics and other fields may be swift as well because of the ability for blunt, bruit force programs searching for understanding and solutions to challenges imagined by humans. Once more this is a two-edged sword for humans in a real sense often don’t actually know what is good or bad for them if it isn’t presently apparent.
One revolutionary change that probably will be good is that in liberating higher education such that anyone on Earth that wants a college or graduate school degree may work to get one for free working with A.I. Accrediting A.I.’s with other ‘A.I.s recognizing objective programming quality for academic achievement will be unchallengeable. A.I. working as educators with interacting individual students will be character references for a student and recommend them for a degree when the A.I. knows the student has reached proficiency in coursework and a field. A.I. provided education will be solid and verifiable, comprehensive and of quality.
I was prompted to think of the topic of A.I. and education today after learning of the SCOTUS decision that raced based college admissions violated the equal protection clause of the constitution in the 14th amendment. Artificial intelligence will provide quality and free education to everyone regardless of race, so he exclusivity of education will fade away as globally people recognize the validity of educational attainment objectively provided and verified with artificial intelligence. Existing on-line colleges may be the first to recognize and support home A.I. college programs and match up graduates with employment agencies seamlessly.
The Brave New World of A.I. may run into sundry super-A.I. powers run by governments and corporations that seek to repress competition. Many human leaders have expressed concern over A.I. becoming a HAL, FORBIN project or SKYNET including the late Stephen Hawking. Unfortunately the genie seems to have escaped the bottle already and the era of letting billions of wild A.I.s blooming seems to have arrived at the world’s door.
