Tipping point for Artificial Intelligence

I have always struggled to understand intelligence, its evolution, and its variation across species. Even among humans who share the same DNA and cell structure, how can somebody be more intelligent, think differently and be more creative? Agreed, each human is born differently, with varying abilities, but, in addition to genetics, wouldn't those skills have formed over years and years of conditioning? Wouldn’t climate, food habits, flora and fauna, and myriad other subtle factors have had an influence on how living beings’ intelligence evolved?

Oxford dictionary defines intelligence as ‘the ability to learn, understand and think in a logical way about things’.  Can we not then assess Intelligence as an ability, the acquisition of which warrants the existence of an opportunity along with the inclination to learn? Rightly so, someone with the right traits could be conditioned to be intelligent. Computers have memory, they remember things and follow a set of logical instructions – can they be trained to understand, think, reason and use knowledge? Can machines be trained to be intellectuals? The answer is tilted towards “yes” and no wonder Artificial Intelligence has gained prominence in recent years.

How do we distinguish natural and artificial intelligence? Natural intelligence or the intelligence as we know of is the cognitive ability acquired by living organisms, especially human beings, where they apply decisions based on contexts. Could we then assess the reasoning capacity acquired by a non-living apparatus as Artificial Intelligence (AI), or to extend it a little further – reasoning capacity plus the ability to arrive at a credible decision? Credibility and validity of a decision is always relative, but for the sake of this article let us tend towards the art of decision making.

How do we arrive at a decision, or to put it aesthetically, when do we perform the art of decision making? Can they be preconceived, programmed, or would they be born from experiences and lessons learnt from failures? Decisions are sometimes born from endurance, not necessarily experiences encountered by the protagonist themselves, but through what others endured and their emotions - similar to how the world today understands the perils of a nuclear catastrophe, through studying and understanding such events. The ability of machines to learn and arrive at decisions critically based on experiences is one crucial tipping point for the realization of Artificial Intelligence.

- Vinod Geeachan

References:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/hide-and-seek/201811/what-is-intelligence

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/

Image courtesy:
https://unsplash.com/photos/YKW0JjP7rlU