AI-Sentience: Jan-10-2023

Unless you've been living under a rock the past 50 years you've probably heard of Artaficial Intelligence or more commonly known as AI. AI was initially created after the end of the second world war and at the beginning of the cold war. This era was a time of rapid technological development unseen before in history. With a new facination on computer technology brought about my the technology from World War 2 computers made rapid advancements. For example the decimal logic system that was used in computers as early as the 19th century was replaced by a new Binary logic system created by Alan Turing and John Von Neumann that utalized a series of 1's and 0's instead of the Decimal systems 0-9. This led to the creation of the foundation of contemporary computers and showed it was a universal machine capable of being programmed and executed the commands. This led to Alan Turings famous article in 1950 'Computing machines and Intelligence' where he mentioned what is now called the Turing test. This was a test that tested to see if a machine could properly imitate a human or what Turing called "The Imitation game" and although at that time no machine could pass the Imitation game Turing beleived it wouldn't be long until machines could pass the test. Not to much later the term AI was coined by John McCarthy which was defined by Marvin Minskey as "the construction of computer programs that engage in tasks that are currently more satisfactorily preformed by human beings because they require a high-level mental processes such as:perceptual learning, memory organization and critical reasoning. Thus AI was Born.

Flash Forward 60 years to 2010 and the world been in another technology boom with computers and the invention of the cell phone, the internet now exists and data is more accessable than ever. Technology companies are bigger than ever before and they're constantly searching for something that can one up their opponents. Then in 2011 Apple released Siri and it changed the game completely. The popularity of an AI voice assistant was instantanious and once companies realized it was profitable AI technology began a new golden age. Every tech giant had to have their own assistant with more features than the last, between Microfoft's Cortana, Amazon's Alexa, Google's Assistant and Apples Siri there was more interest in AI then ever before. The next 10 years didn't change anything in fact AI technology has gotten drastically better over that time period. AI can now draw digital art and is now being implanted into humanoid robots like Sophia which is an AI powered robot who was developed by HongKong based Hansen Robotics. She has been dubbed the "Robotic Ambassador" and she can move, talk, show some emotions, draw and sing.

However the things that make Sophia special are the same that are putting people on edge. Although mostly fueled by pop culture and movies like the Terminator these concerns are valid. The truth of the matter is we don't know what AI can do or what its capable of, and that can terrify people. However AI is becoming more and more apperant in our daily lives and is inevidable in our future. The only question left to wonder is if it will lead to Human Utopia or Dystopia.

Despite what many people say, ultimatly humanity can gain so much from AI and turn this word into a Utopia. This doesn't mean that there won't be speedbumps but at the end of the day AI might be the technology that gets us there. Being able to automate even the simplist things in our lifes can be an enormous help. An example I used above was AI art and so i'll continue with that example, using an AI algorithm the people at DALL-E 2 created an app that allows users to input any prompt and the AI would instantaniously create a picture regarding those contents. Which is incredible when your entering stupid concepts such as a boat made out of blue string or etc.. However whilst the majority of people were lookimg up funny or stupid concepts there were others using this technology to create fake propaganda, deepfakes or pornography. Which goes to show that AI really is whatever we want it to be and can show the sides of humanity. The company has already fixed the algorithm to ban those sensative topics. It shows us that people can corrupt anything but should that stop us from pursueing ambitions with AI?

Ultimatly AI will become a dominant part in our day to day lives. They're already being integrated into housing and with the constant development it won't be long until many tasks that would otherwise be done by people can easily be replaced by an AI. People beleive that allowing AI to be such a intigrate part of our lives could be dangerous if the AI decided to suddenly turn evil. First of all that is obviously a ridiculous concept due to the Three laws of Robotics. These state that Firstly, A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Secondly, A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First law. Third, A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. There is a zeroth law added later that states, a robot must not hurt humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity yo come to any harm. For these simple reasons we can conclude that the fears of robots rising against humans are falsely placed. This is because the robots are restricted from doing harm to humans.

Now that we've gotten the doubts about the safety of these AI, we can talk about the benefits. There are several jobs that are reliant on humans doing terrifying and dangerous potential life ending tasks. However it is beleived that Sentient AI can replace these workers and do the same job. While this might lead to the loss of jobs, there are plenty of jobs accross the board that don't have the risk of severe injury or death. AI can also make work more efficient. Humans can only work so many hours a day, while AI can work nonstop. The AI can do the same menial task for days on end with no loss in efficiency that we might see in human workers. On the social side of AI they can also be used to solve problems. Sentient AI can most likely solve problems on levels computers can't comprehend yet. With computers main "language" being logical answers, asking a normal computer an emotion filled question its response might not be the right answer. However with sentient AI tha ability for AI to be able to feel and perceive others, while also applying this computer type logic could possibly change the game in phsychology fields. These are just a few points for the benefits of sentient AI, but even from these you can see the direct benefit. With these few changes AI can saves lives of countless workers and make work more efficient bringing us closer to future teechnology and innovations much sooner than otherwise found out.

In conclusion Sentient AI is when an AI has the ability to feel and perceive self, others and world. It is inevidable and whilst there will be speedbumps possibly due to the nature of humanity AI will eventually be integrated into our daily lives. There are thoguths that AI Robots might take over the earth and kill us all. However these thoughts are prompt up through pop culture and cannot be true due to the Laws of robotics. The Benefits of Sentient AI can make dangerous jobs null for humans, as well as do work more efficiently saving time and money bringing us closer to future technology. With all these points one can conclude that Sentient AI will bring us closer to a Utopia we can call Earth.

Sources

10 humanoid robots of 2020. (n.d.). The American Society of Mechanical Engineers - ASME. https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/10-humanoid-robots-of-2020

Allen, J. (2021, October 4). 10 years of Siri: The history of Apple's voice assistant. TechRadar. https://www.techradar.com/news/siri-10-year-anniversary

(n.d.). Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/07/11/is-sentient-ai-upon-us/?sh=2bb17f2112cb

History of artificial intelligence. (n.d.). Artificial Intelligence. https://www.coe.int/en/web/artificial-intelligence/history-of-ai

Vyas, K. (2021, April 6). Don't fear the AI: 7 ways AI will help humanity rather than harm it. Interesting Engineering | Technology, Science, Innovation News and Videos. https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/7-ways-ai-will-help-humanity-not-harm-it