Page 40 - Robots Androids and Animatrons : 12 Incredible Projects You Can Build

gence is and forever will be unsurpassed. I don’t take any comfort in
that illusion. AI is an evolving, uncompromising, unrelenting reality.
Greater than I
Would we as the human race want to produce an intelligence supe-
rior to our own? If you think about it, in the long run we may need
to just to survive. Think of the advantages for the first nation that
produced an AI machine with an IQ of 300. The AI machine could
be given tasks such as improving the national economy, cleaning
up the environment, ending pollution, developing military strat-
egy in the event of war, performing medical and scientific research,
and, of course, designing still smarter machines than itself. It’s pos-
sible that the next theory of the universe will not be put forth by a
human (as previously done by Albert Einstein) but by a competent
AI machine.

The locked cage

Why is creating a superior intelligence so important? Wouldn’t hu-
mankind find the answers to all these vexing problems eventually? 19
Perhaps. The necessity of generating a superior AI is best illustrated
with a story. I once heard or read this story. I’m afraid I don’t remem-
ber the author and to him or her I apologize. And if I have changed
the story a bit in the retelling, I apologize for that also.
Ten chimpanzees are in a cage. The cage door is locked. To reason
how to unlock the lock and open the cage door requires an intelli-
gence quotient (IQ) of approximately 90. Each chimp in the cage
has been tested, and each has an IQ of about 60. Could the 10
chimps working together find a way to unlock the cage door? The
answer is NO! Intelligence is not accumulative. If it were, the 10
chimps working together would have a combined IQ of 600, more
than enough to reason out how to open the cage door. In real life
the chimps remain caged.
In the real world we have problems involving global pollution, eco-
nomics, diseases like cancer and AIDs, the general quest for
longevity, and any and all facets of science research that can be sub-
stituted for the lock on the cage door. The importance of generating
superior AI becomes clearly apparent. The AI may be able to uncover
keys to unlock these problems that until then will remain effectively
hidden from us.

Team LRN Artificial life and artificial intelligence