You can’t help but wonder about this every time you boot up your computer. Will a day come when the darn thing will have a personality of its own? Why not? We have talked about so many things on this site in the past, that if you add up the ones that refer to artificial intelligence, you will reach an almost inescapable conclusion, someday our computer will be smarter than us. Scary thought, isn’t it? I can see it now, there you are typing something and the computer stops you and says “you don’t really think that what you typed is actually true, do you?” I don’t think that I would care for this sort of thing.

Computers gaining intelligence are really just fast computers with better software. That software will be some sort of fuzzy logic software. They actually won’t have intelligence at all, they will just convince us that they do. It is the old argument again. How do we know if a computer has ever reached sentient life? I believe the answer to this question is easy, we never will, but we, through clever programming, will feel that they have. I know that what I have said goes against the way that many scientists feel, but what exactly is a computer program? It is nothing more than a set of instructions created by those who wrote the program. These instructions tell your computer how to react in certain situations. Humans have instructions built into them, these are the instructions that were taught to them by their parents and other instructions that they learned during their lifetime. Of course, what I am about to say only deals with our voluntary choices, not with all the other reactions that are dictated by our genetic code and such. I am not talking about making our hearts beat or our reactions to disease or anything like that.

Robot Introduces Self
Photo Source: NASA

We can choose not to do the thing that we believe is the right reaction to a given situation. The computer can only choose from a limited reaction, the reaction or reactions that have been programmed into it. Even if some day, somehow, the computer is given a program that allows it to make any choice it wants, no matter how irrational, it will still not be alive. Scientists are always comparing computers to our brain, which they claim is the most powerful computer in the world. My opinion is that a computer is a weak imitation of our brains. Sure in some ways it can do things much faster than we can. You don’t see anyone walking around trying to calculate Pi to 1,000 digits in their head, I am the first to admit this, but you also don’t see a computer creating a great masterpiece. Computers seem to lack that spirit of originality that is required to perform such a task. Some might say that they have no soul, in the artistic sense. If we were to program into a computer all the great attributes of the old masters, we would only get a compilation of all their techniques, we wouldn’t get anything unique.

We, as humans, can be made to feel that something is alive that isn’t. For example, look at the Honda Robot. It certainly gives the impression of life as does some of the other robots out there, but it is nothing more than a moveable computer with clever coding that has the ability to move like a human. Let's take our crystal ball and look into the future. There is no doubt that computers will seem to be alive in the future. Quantum computing is just over the horizon. I confess that I just don’t understand this concept, but I do know that it will make today’s computers seem like children’s toys compared to it. The part I have trouble with is the fact that something will change its state, but if you look at it, it won’t. Oh well, we can’t all be Einsteins. Close to fruition is the light powered computer. Instead of electricity zooming around inside the computers box, light waves, which will travel much faster will be doing the job. While this will give us a tremendous increase in speed, it is nothing compared to quantum computing. I feel that we really will never build a computer that achieves life until we completely understand what life is. I don’t think that anyone at this stage of our development really knows the answer to this question.

Humanoid Type Robot
Photo Source: US Navy

Can we have artificial intelligence without life? Absolutely. We already have some of it now. On the most simplistic level there are those simple programs where you type something in and the computer answers you. It has analyzed what you have written and make a choice on what to answer based on the words used and maybe the sentence construction. Some of the answers, using this method, usually don’t make any sense, but some do. More complex AI (artificial intelligence) programs are used in some robots, but they usually depend on the user learning certain phrases and words to use to get the robot to perform a task. For example, you might have to say “get me a coke Ironman”, to get a certain robot named Ironman to bring you a coke. His name is used so that he knows where the command ended. If you would have said “hey bring me a coke”, or something similar, you may get nothing because the robot wouldn’t know what you were talking about.

Until we can converse with a machine the same way we talk to another human, we don’t have the type of true artificial intelligence that we can even compare to our own. It is like trying to compare the Model T Ford to a modern Lexus. We are making huge advances in the field of artificial intelligence, so I don’t expect this problem to exist too much longer, perhaps less than 50 years, who knows. Once we pass this hurdle it will get harder to differentiate between life and machine.