How AI came about and how it will affect us Part 1

Today we will be taking a look at AI. This is part one of four so don't forget to follow me at @thepsychguide to stay up to date. Enough said Let's dive straight in.

What is Artificial Intelligence

To understand what AI is we have to know what intelligence is first. In simple terms, Intelligence is the ability to obtain and apply a certain skill or knowledge.However,Others like Einstein believe that intelligence isn't just about knowledge but imagination. This of course makes defining intelligence and translating it to a computer difficult ,But we as humans can point out intelligence when we see it so we all kind of have a basic meaning of intelligence already built inside of us. The term artificial intelligence was coined in 1956 by John McCarthy, though.

AI History

The First Artificial intelligence machine was made in the early 1900s. It was the first difference machine to come about. The machine would be able to do basic math like adding or subtracting. Now fast forward to 1996 when Gary Kasparov played a game of chess against deep blue. Although at the time he did win, the machine would come back and beat him in a rematch in 1997. Mind you that a very short time to go from a machine that could barely do math to a one that can beat the best in chess. From that point onward humans have been working on improving AI not just play games but do specific tasks

How Can We tell If AI Is Actually Thinking?!

So we know how to create AI and beat the best players in the world, but now we need to test that AI to see if it's actually thinking or just following some dumb software. That's when the Turing test comes in. Basically, We have an interrogator sitting at a computer terminal typing to a hidden entity on the other end of the terminal maybe in another room for example. Then if that entity can convince the interrogator that it's a human thirty percent of the time it has passed the test.

A modern example of AI talking like a human would be a chat bot. Chat bots were first introduced in 1964 with the bot Eliza becoming the first ever chat bot. Things went smoothly from there with more chat bots being introduced like Perry in the 70s and Alice in the 90s. Fun fact most of the names are acronyms. For example, Alice is the artificial linguistics internet computer entity. Today, most chat bots can pass the Turing test.

In the end, the Turing test might not be the best of ways to test intelligence as fooling someone over a chat system isn't really an acurate way of measuring intelligence but I see it as a step in the right direction.

Don't Forget to follow @thepsychguide for more and until next time have a great day