A tad more about Artificial Intelligence

Sankar S Velayudan

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a trending buzzword in the business world and has a bit of mysticism associated with it due to the different contexts where it is being mentioned. Let us try to understand it in a bit of more detail.

Intelligence is the mental ability to reason, solve problems and learn. This is a cognitive function associated with the brain. Artificial Intelligence is the field of study that focuses on building machines that can mimic human intelligence.

3 levels of artificial intelligence are: Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) - AI that specialises in one area. Google AlphaGo that beat Lee Sedol in 2016 is an example; 2) Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) - This is also known as human level AI, which is proficient in multiple areas. We are yet to reach this stage of evolution; 3) Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) - AI thinker Nick Bostrom defines superintelligence as “an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills.”

In any evolution, the inflection points are the periods of significant change. There are two inflection points in the AI evolution journey: ANI to AGI and AGI to ASI

AGI to ASI is commonly known as the singularity point. Singularity refers to transformation from a finite predictable past to an infinite unpredictable future. Ray Kurzweil predicts that this would happen sometime in 2045. So, let us worry about that later since we got some time.

The focus here is the first inflection point from Artificial Narrow Intelligence to Artificial General Intelligence. How is this being approached? Humans use the five basic senses (touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste) to perceive the world. Can we mimic this to create Artificial General Intelligence? Significant progress has been made on this front.

The sense organs for an AGI would be as follows:

Eyes – Cameras available in almost every device from desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

Ears – Always on microphones, which have proliferated, thanks to the rapid adoption of smart speakers, such as Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod.

Skin – The shift from type to touch-based interface on devices helps capture tactile response.

Tongue – The sense of taste that extends beyond just food is captured to a great extent in the digital world (content consumption and past purchases) and in the physical world through loyalty and payment cards/wallets.

Nose – As far as I know, the sense of smell is something, which has not yet been mastered.

If a company manages to find a way to pass on the sense of smell to the machine, would that signify the transition to Artificial General Intelligence?

Well not so fast! There is a strong debate on whether our perception-based intelligence is just a sum of the parts (in this case the five senses) or is there a consciousness that acts as a master controller of these parts. The jury is still out on this one and I am keenly watching this space.

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