The understanding of the world today is in modern-day becoming easier to man with the advancements in technology. For several years, man has sought robots to become more intelligent than him. Artificial intelligence is creations that are related to the computer movements that began around the 1950s. Computers have been around for about 60 years, and their usability has grown incredibly. In these connections, scientists have made tremendous steps in artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence focuses on designing machines that have behaviors that are considered intelligent by human beings. Therefore, machines that can mimic human thought patterns among other cognitive systems are being developed almost on a daily basis.
Nevertheless, they have not succeeded in creating a robot that can completely act like a human being. Building robots that take the form of human nature are more intricate than they can be imagined. However, there are high hopes that artificial intelligence will continue to advance which will consequently enhance the human lifestyle. The question, therefore, begs what the future of intelligence is.
The Future of Intelligence
Before looking at the future of intelligence, it is important to have a brief understanding of modern-day intelligence. Though computer power has grown exponentially, intelligent machines have not reached the level of the human mind. However, since the inception of the intelligent machine, today we have machines that have speech recognition capability, face recognition, translation machines among others. With these advancements, the human lifestyle has improved in various aspects such as social, security, and much more.
What is the future of intelligence? Can machines be as thoughtful or have self-awareness as human beings? The answer to these questions is interrelated. Intelligence in the future is likely to churn out computers and machines, which are more sophisticated than what we have seen today. For instance speech recognition machines that we have today and might reach the human performance levels. It can also be foreseen that the machines will have the ability to efficiently communicate with people using both speech and texts using unstructured English or any other language. This will also be possible in unprepared environments, and the machines might also have some rudimentary common sense as well as domain-specific intelligence.
Nonetheless, the question of whether artificial intelligence can reproduce machines that have self-awareness and more intelligent than the human being is a question that no one has audaciously answered. In the same vein, if it is possible, how much time this might take may not be accurately predicted today. But if science can reproduce the intricacy of the brain considering the millions of neurons plus the folded gray matter, the result; a robot that has a computerized brain probably might have the ability to think for itself and have self-awareness. Also, in the future computers might have the capacity to stimulate intelligence instead of merely imitating the human brain resulting in artificial intelligence. This resulting artificial intelligence could be usable in virtual environments by acting intelligently, reacting, and giving responses to their users. However, reproducing human consciousness might take time before it is reproduced on a machine.
In the future, artificial intelligence will lead to the development of machines that have basic common sense similar to human beings, though it will only be with regard to particular areas only. It can also be projected that some functions of the human mind such as learning through experience, learning through rehearsal, perception, and cognition will be replicated in intelligent machines. Researches to recreate the human brain are ongoing. One of the examples, of these studies, is the CCortex, which is a project that was being carried out by Artificial Development Inc., and California and Swiss government’s IBM supported Blue Brain project. The goal of the project was to simulate the human brain. However, the biggest question with the future of intelligence remains whether intelligent machines will have human consciousness.
Since intelligence on machines is expected to get more sophisticated in the future, the machines will take up every kind of work. Whether work at home, office work, or any other, the machines will accomplish the work faster than humans can do. For example, in the future, if one falls ill, they can get a robot nurse to administer medicine periodically. Again, the amount of care, empathy, and concern that the robot nurse will show to the patients is still a guess.
There will also be increased practical applications that are centered on digitally recreated aspects of human intelligence like cognition, learning by repeated practice, or rehearsal learning. Not long ago, a U.S based Indian scientist invented the first artificial kidney. This is one of the latest advancement of AI. If the invention passes the human tests, it will be a godsend to many patients who are suffering from kidney diseases and in need of dialysis.
In the end, the development of useful artificial intelligence will require machines to acquire a variant human consciousness. A system without self-awareness and sentience will always be very fragile. Without these unique human features, useful and powerful assistance remains a meaningful goal to be achieved. With the field of artificial intelligence in its infancy, the twenty-first century is likely to experience a tremendous advancement. Creating an artificial intelligence that can act like, react like, and talk like human beings will be a major leap in intelligence. Also, it is right to expect that robots that have human beings in their best interests will be walking among them, not in the very distant future.