HUMAN versus AI Michael Parker

It was Julius Caesar who said, “experience is the teacher of all things.” And now AI is starting to learn from experience, learning to learn like us, but the experience is different. They can pick up patterns and rules that we would never dream of, teaching us more about the world around us in the process. And they’re only going to get more advanced as time goes on.

THINKING - In 1950 Alan Turing wrote ‘I propose to consider the question, “Can machines think?” He went on to describe his thought experiment. If a person submitting questions could not distinguish the machine from a human, then it was a thinking machine. He predicted that a machine would pass his Turing Test. Sixty years later, yet we are still waiting for one to pass.

INTELLIGENCE - “If a machine can think, it might think more intelligently than we do, and then where would we be?” Alan Turing. All experts agree AI will achieve this with super intelligence. They differ on when. Some say AI will have no malicious intent and that its limitless intelligence will liberate the human mind. Others, like Elon Musk , say ‘it will wipe out humanity without even thinking about it.’

HONESTY - Over two and a half thousand years ago, Aesop told us ‘Honesty is the best policy.’ Jonathan Swift warned that “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” AI may prefer the philosophy of Groucho Marx, “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

HUMOUR - ’Artificial intelligence will never get jokes as humans do. In themselves, they have no need for humour. They completely miss context. Teaching AI systems humour is dangerous because they may find it where it isn’t, and they may use it where it’s inappropriate. Maybe bad AI will start killing people because it thinks it is funny.’ Kiki Hempelmann.

CREATIVITY - An AI has painted the ‘next’ Rembrandt, exhibited all over the world. AI is composing and making music to order in a matter of seconds. AI novels are on Amazon. So far, none are threatening genuine artists. Perhaps they never will. “Artificial intelligence programs lack consciousness and self-awareness. They will never be able to appreciate art, or beauty, or love”. GPT-3