Draft of Project 1

This is an essay rough draft about Artificial Intelligence, and the recent controversy surrounding it.

robot.jpg, 03/2015, wp-content, Public Domain.

This is a very tentative draft; this is not a final copy by any means. Do not address formatting, arrangement of ideas, etc; this draft is purely for the content. If you must, then you can comment on the form if it is distracting. PLEASE make comments if you felt I didn't adequately explain something, or missed a point altogether. Thanks!

The 21st century is an age of exploration. We currently live in a digital age, whether you want to accept it or not; to live a life in complete isolation from technology would actually be impossible. Technology is used in the methods by which we produce food and medicine, by which we drive our cars, by which we would do it all again on a different planet. "Progress is a tide. If we stand, we will surely be drowned. To stay on the crest, we must keep moving." On January 27th 2016, Mark Zuckerberg came out and told the world that there is nothing to fear with regards to AI, which goes against everything that Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking have established. Artificial Intelligence should not be feared; should history repeat itself, technology has only been used to progress the future, not pose an eminent threat.

There is a lot we don't know about artificial intelligence, but let's start with what we know. We know that artificial intelligence reaches all aspects of life. "Diagnosing cancer, driving cars, transcribing speech, playing games and tagging photos may sound like very different tasks, but they're all examples of teaching an AI to recognize patterns by showing them many examples."(from Zuckerberg's original post). We also know that with this immense capacity to incite change, there must be limitations too. The greatest limitation that separates us from these robots is the capacity to learn. We understand our environment through trial and error everyday. We test boundaries, we touch hot stoves to know not to do it the next time. Artificial intelligence does NOT have the capacity to use common sense because it has to be instructed to recall something - evidence as for why Artificial Intelligence will not in the near future be autonomous, self-governing.

In order to persuade the general population about the inevitably progressive role that Artificial Intelligence will play in the future, we cannot let powerful people instill fear in our hearts for their own probable gain. These same people (Musk) who advise against the dangers of Artificial Intelligence already use it and place big money on it. Musk spent $1 billion on an AI company with another startup CEO that he says will be "usable by everyone instead of usable by, say, just Google.” Don't you find it ironic that the same person preaching to you the evils of Artificial Intelligence is the same man investing over a billion dollars in it? His investment in self-driving Teslas, coupled with his race to create the robot who could beat the masters at the ancient game of "Go" (which he did not win, google beat him to that), remember his comment about Google?) provide ample evidence that Musk is dissuading others in order to take credit for the exploration and advancement of AI.

Artificial intelligence is not something that we need to brood over. It's not going to magically hit us at some point - we use artificial intelligence every single day throughout or daily lives. However, piece by piece, it will advance the way by which we operate our daily lives, communicate with our loved ones, and find sustainable life for generations to come. We have a lot of problems and the population of people is only increasing. It's about time we hold hands with our robot friends and walk into the future, together.