Artificial intelligence is a technology that mimics human thinking and abilities, and it’s evolving through examples such as AlphaGo and Google Car. AI is needed to accelerate human intellectual improvement, and it can be understood as an extension of human evolution.
It was not long ago that the topic of AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol was a very hot topic, even though it seems to have cooled down now. Artificial intelligence is a technology that allows computers to reproduce human intelligent behavior by imitating activities that humans can do with their intelligence, such as thinking, learning, and developing certain abilities. The term artificial intelligence (AI) was first used in 1956, and as it is popularly known, AI was developed with the primary goal of solving complex problems. Furthermore, while at the beginning of the technology’s development, computers were simply solving problems given to them by humans, the goal was to program machines to make their own decisions when faced with a problem, and to make active choices in the same way that humans make active choices.
While the advancements in AI technology are exciting on their own, it’s important to look at the factors that have made them possible. For example, advances in deep learning algorithms have greatly improved the performance of AI. Deep learning is a method of analyzing and learning from data using neural networks, and it has shown great results in image recognition, speech recognition, and more. In addition, advances in cloud computing have given us the ability to process and store vast amounts of data. This has played a crucial role in AI research and development.
The recent development of big data, a field that studies large amounts of information, coupled with the rapid development of hardware that can process astronomical amounts of data, has led to the near-completion of AI that can calculate the profit and loss of options in a problem situation and make the most “rational” choice. The most recent examples are AlphaGo, an AI that plays Go with human Lee Sedol, and Google Car, a representative unmanned car developed by Google’s Flex Labs. Both AIs use big data to determine the optimal choice in each situation and almost perfectly reproduce human ‘reason’.
So, why are humans so intensely focused on developing A.I.? It’s easy to assume that it’s simply because they’re promising technologies for the future, and that it’s inevitable, given the large amounts of capital and manpower invested in them by large companies like Google and Samsung. But if you think about it, it’s not just a natural continuation of a series of events, from the Agricultural Revolution to the Industrial Revolution to the Information Revolution. According to the currently accepted evolutionary theory of where we came from, all living things evolve in order to avoid being excluded from the laws of weakness and strength. Humans are no exception. Although it’s not yet a definitive theory, from an evolutionary perspective, human evolution has been put on hold. Technological innovations have allowed us to overcome our physical limitations and, as a result, modify nature to benefit us. However, humans have no reason to evolve at the same time, which has slowed down our evolution. As a result, humans instinctively tried to create entities that could continue the slow evolution, and one of the products is artificial intelligence. If A.I. is developed that can think the same as humans and produce better results, it will not only improve our intellectual abilities but also spur us to overcome our physical limitations.
However, in order for this to happen, we will need to evolve faster than it took humanity to come into existence. This is because the more advanced technology becomes, the more problems it creates, and we cannot afford to slow down our intellectual advancement to solve them.
So what does an AI need to be able to do to accelerate that intellectual improvement? Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions explains that science and technology make a quantum leap when they present a paradigm that overturns the contradictions that accumulate in the “steady state” of the accepted paradigm of the time. By extension, human intellectual improvement is possible when we break the incomplete frameworks (or perspectives, or paradigms) that we currently have. However, the history of science shows that it takes centuries to break the mold, and humans, who are currently facing a myriad of problems, cannot move forward at the same pace. We need an A.I. that has the ability to respond to the problems it encounters in a human-like manner, but is faster than the human brain. This is the inner reason why humans are so obsessed with developing AI.
In conclusion, the development of AI is not just a technological advancement, but an essential step in the continuation of human evolution and development. It will allow humanity to respond to new challenges and create a better future. The possibilities that artificial intelligence can offer us are endless, and they depend on further technological advances and human cooperation.
