Jessica Riskin’s article, “The Defecating Duck, or, the Ambiguous Origins of Artificial Life”, has left us questioning our understanding of life and machinery. Purists would say that it is impossible to compare life and machinery as anything manmade simply cannot match the inherent intelligence of biological life. But some examples of the so-called “Artificial Intelligence” in today’s world boldly claim that the gap between life and machines can indeed be bridged. This article provides a sociologist’s insight into the world of Artificial Intelligence.
Sixth Sense – an introduction
Sixth Sense is a versatile and intuitive wearable gestural interface device developed mainly by Pranav Mistry, a PhD student at the Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT. This critically acclaimed marvel of engineering is just about the best example of Artificial Intelligence in the modern world. Sixth Sense consists of a camera, a portable media projector, a small portable computer and coloured finger caps to enable the camera to sense hand gestures. This device is portable and can be worn around the neck. It functions as a “digital assistant” by providing its user with information on essentially whatever the user sees or hears. Please watch this video to see for yourself.
So, it seems that this device can really “sense” the surroundings and “guess” what information the user is looking for. On seeing a book cover, it gives reviews on the book. On seeing a plane ticket, it shows information on the flight. It can even look at a roll of toilet paper, quickly research the web and tell you whether it is eco-friendly or not. It can look at a map and give weather statistics at various places. It can even read hand gestures and zoom in and out of a map, take pictures or draw on a wall.
Is this Artificial Intelligence?
This kind of behaviour seems convincingly intelligent. I mean, who would have thought some “machine” you can wear around your neck can actually understand what you want to know without you actually telling it or typing it in somewhere? It is like having a (human) personal assistant knowing what you need and when and arranging for it, only more efficient. One can always be sceptical and argue that this is not intelligence, but rather a big and complicated program with a lot of image and sound processing, at work. But the level of intuitiveness, versatility and ingenuity that Sixth Sense presents is way above that of most other machines we know of. This forces us to believe that this machine has a certain amount of “artificial intelligence”.
Artificial Intelligence – how intelligent?
After having accepted the existence of AI, our next question is – can AI, after a lot of improvement, development and sophistication, eventually equal human intelligence? Or is human intelligence an irreplaceable entity? There are valid arguments on both sides of this debate. Sixth Sense has convinced us that AI can reach heights never imagined before. Yesterday’s science fiction is today’s reality. What we speculate today may happen in future for real. We may be able to create machines having intelligence levels never thought of. Future automata may be able to “live” independently, without human command or interaction. They may be designed to be able to make decisions themselves, like humans. But as it is with everything, machines and AI also have their limits. The greatest factor that separates life from machines is consciousness. Consciousness, in this context, is the ability of a being to sense and observe its surroundings, make decisions based on these observations and act accordingly. It is consciousness that enables us to learn from our past and make predictions on our immediate future. Throughout history, Man has tried to simulate lifelike consciousness in machines, but has never been completely successful. A machine may be able to make calculations of great complexities, but it lacks subjective thinking. This is why machines are unable to show emotions or form opinions.
Thus, it can be concluded that machinery can be made to have great intelligence and to imitate living creatures in various aspects, but only to a certain limit, because life is indeed irreplaceable.
By Pranav R Kamat
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very nice info .but it would be nice if u can send me links on how the artificial intelligence is used & linked with 6th sense device.
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