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Artificial intelligence and conscious machinery
“I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”—HAL 9000 from “2001: A Space Odyssey”
Science fiction is replete with superintelligent robots—some benign and others malevolent. Though many view these robots as figments of an author’s imagination, the field of artificial intelligence (AI) begs to differ. According to the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, AI “aims to understand and develop systems—living and artificial—capable of intelligent reasoning, perception and behavior.”
If you are unfamiliar with the field of artificial intelligence, John McCarthy of Stanford University provides an introductory resource to the field entitled “What Is Artificial Intelligence?”, which answers commonly asked questions and discusses AI branches and applications. Containing artificial intelligence news and philosophical essays on machine consciousness, KurzweilAI.net by inventor, futurist and author Ray Kurzweil, is dedicated to “accelerating intelligence” for humans, machines and cyborgs. Some researchers view robots as having depth beyond mere computational power. For example, the PBS show NOVA recently profiled Cynthia Breazeal and her efforts to build socially and emotionally intelligent robots.
Intrigued? If so, try chatting with Jabberwacky, a chatbot that aims to simulate natural human chat by using artificial intelligence to learn language, facts and context. Have fun and get used to Jabberwacky’s non sequiturs.
To further explore the cutting edge studies in AI, the UB Libraries carries many helpful databases, including IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library and the online version of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.
Finally, if this column has tapped into a deep-seated paranoia, the UB Libraries has books that can help you through your existential angst, including “How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion”. But make sure you hide it from HAL and your other robot overlords.
—Dean Hendrix, University Libraries