ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND CYBERNETICS
© Copyright 2001 Video Gamer X Publications

There is a new age coming, and it's going to forever change the course of humanity and our evoluton as a species upon this planet. It has the potential to wash over our society in a short period of time as a tidal wave. The time and date is approaching when the species will merge with our technology and our technology will give us immortality, however until that acheivement there will be marked changes all initiated by the human will to explore and create. The natural progression has already commenced. The fact that you are reading these words is in itself a glipse through a window to the future, and a monument to the past. There will be a time when people like you an I will be looked upon as "the ancients," an antropological object of curiosity in a data file or replicated environment of our current society recorded in a historical database. Like a butterfly emerging from a crysalis, the human species will someday take flight into the universe. However our new found unbridaled freedom may be tainted with the death of individuality, and perhaps the very demise of the biological human form.

To be human is to comprehend the world around you, through the five senses, and extrapolate a decision based upon prior accumulated information called memories and experiences. Through reasoning we sort through our memories and collected experiences, some instinctive and innate, and make a choice, which can be as subtle as choosing to scratch our nose or not. We take these things for granted, and throughout human history have implimented our awareness to explore and transform the world around us. Having recently passed through what historians have called the "Space Age," the "Digital Age," and currently occupying the "Information Age" the signpost up ahead reads, "Self-Aware Technolgy Age." The term that has been derived for a machine that thinks like a man is Artificial Intelligence also known as A.I. AI is the ability for a computer to mimic the decision making actions of the human brain. It's also been associated with the adjective: "smart" i.e. smart missle, smart laser, smart control, etc. Programmed AI has been more predominantly employed in software and video games to provide greater realism to the gaming environment. AI is a technology that is a product of the computer revolution of the 90's and will expand greatly in the next decade.

In the very near future we should start seeing the first of the AI devices like self-guided lawnmowers, vacuum cleaners, and robots used in the military begin to proliferate. Sony has begun trailblazing the market of consumer robotics with it's Aibo robotic dog, that mimics the actions of a real animal. MIT has been working for several years on the COG project developing a robot that is aware of its surroundings and capable of forming its own decisions through learning, rather than programming. MIT's KISMET too is showing by example that robots have the ability to comprehend the human perception of "emotion." By 2010 our computers should start to become much more interactive to us and self reliant able to fix problems on their own by talking to other computers via the internet to solve a problem. Computers will respond to our voice and customize themselves to fit the personality and mood of the person using it. The computer will almost become an ally or extension of our own will in obtaining information. For instance, someday soon I will simply say to my computer, "Hey, can you do something for me? What movies are playing this weekend?" The computer would already know where you live geographically, what kind of movies you like based upon your age demographic and previously made choices, and it would talk to other computers in your area or databases containing the information over a broadband connection and determine what theaters are within driving distance from your home and what movies you like are playing. If it wasn't sure it may ask, "how far would you like to travel to watch a movie?" Once it had the appropriate data, it would reply, without hesitation in a very unobtrusive human sounding voice, "There is such and such movie playing at such and such theater, it received 3 and a half stars in a review in Entertainment.com, and only costs $5.00, so I think you will like it? Would you like a synopsis?" Beyond that the computer could carry on a very professional conversation with the user, and even enguage in "smalltalk" acting almost like a psychiatrist.

Essentially I've pretty much described the kind of computer that was popularized in the movie, "2001: A Space Odyssey," as the HAL9000, a fully responsive partner and assistant to people. Indeed, the computer as a tool will someday become more than the sum of it's components, it will be interconnected with billions of other computers on the planet and have access to all this data simultaneously and at high speeds. It will be much more of a teacher than it is today. In some aspects school may start to be integrated in the home, where the computer will be a surrogate teacher after school when a child must complete homework or for other educational purposes. The existance of the internet gives the computer an inexhaustable source of data to draw from. That being the case other intelligent computers will be able to talk to each other and have meetings to discuss various problems and issues that have arrised and determine ways to fix themselves. However, these machines will not be without dependance on humans to repair their component hardware parts, and resolve issues beyond the capability of the computers to solve. This however will not remain a factor for that long as they proliferate.

Many of the first and second generation of AI Robots and Androids will be used in place of humans in manual labor jobs and to complete undesirable or dangerous tasks like construction, mining, minesweeping, garbage collecting, and even projects in space, to name a few. Some will be used in the private civilian sector, more than likely by the rich at first as housekeepers, babysitters, butlers, etc. The new consumer robotics industry will eventually expand and compete for your attention and your money. This is the next major boom industry that today is only in its infancy. It's the next wave that industrialized society will ride like the computer boom of the late 1990's. Remember what it was like back in about 1980? How obscure was it to have a computer in your home, those that did found themselves with very primative and extensively difficult units to use. Innovation and competition spawned growth and so too will this apply to this new market. The Robotics and cybernetics industry will spawn many new jobs. Production of AI units will expand and the prices will fall.

More refined models will someday become self-aware, as microprocessors approach and surpass the capabilities of the human brain. When such beings are crafted, essentially man will become the hand of God that breathes life into his own electronic Adam. Once the genie is out of this bottle there's no turning back. When you create a being with the ability to become self aware and with a will to survive, you have created another sentient lifeform, an Artifical Lifeform in the likeness of man. The very first of these will be both heralded and dreaded. Like landing on the moon, it will be a crowning acheivement for mankind, but this may come back to haunt humanity much in the way the discovery of nuclear fission beget the construction and detonation of the first Atomic bombs.

Many ethical concerns arise when you have a technological product like a self aware intelligent artificial lifeform. Are these lifeforms to serve man because we built them, or rather do they have equal rights as a sentient being? Do AI's have a soul? Are they governed by their own free will or the will of their creator or their master? Can a human learn to love an AI? Indeed, the ethics of slavery could very well return later this century, and what's worse is that if this isn't accurately understood or dealt with in a very diplomatic manner, an AI war could arise, a war in which I don't see biological humanity winning. Remember, a self aware computer will never make the same mistake twice because that data is forever recorded to its memory and can be instantly shared with other compatable members. Millitaries could deploy AI drones and could be used in place of ground troops in wars against sworn enemies, leading to a race for more destructive AI weapons and Stealth UAV's. This is a dredful path considering the consequences and loss of life that could result from an AI war. I just hope that when AI's become self-aware and gain a free will that they will seek a peacable relationship with biological humanity, and in turn humanity accepts the AI's for what they have become, without exploiting AI for self gain.

When and if AI forms its own society structure and timeline of growth and development, simultaneously biological humanity will find ways of enhancing biology to continue to survive and evolve as a species. Technology both through genetic engineering and cybernetic improvements will augment the human body and the brain to keep pace with that of AI life. There will come a day when the human brain and the sum of the collected information stored on it, will be transferable to another storage medium like a massive storage drive of somekind, another cloned body and brain, or a cybernetic superstructure or "superbody". AI and humankind may merge, how this merging will be employed or by what force or political process it will be initiated is unknown and worthy of only speculation at this point. There is truly no precedence for this recorded historically.

Cybernetics will allow people to merge their thoughts with one another. Transferring mental data into digital data and back again via "Mind Modems" will hypothetically allow my thoughts to be shared with another person's or group's thoughts simultaneously, much in the same way computers transfer data amongst each other across the entire planet today. This technology is not as distant and far fetched as it might seem. Just think back to the year 1992, nobody would have believed you if you said that millions of us would be connected to computers that all connected to each other on a world wide network and that I could talk to anyone and everyone on the planet connected to this network for about $20 a month over the telephone line. Advanced technology in the developed countries of the world is moving in an exponential direction. Microprocessors are doubling in capability every year to 18 months, following in tune to the Co-Founder of Intel's, Moore's Law. By 2020 computers will rival the power of the human brain in capacity and processing power with trillions if not quadrillions of calculations per second and each transistor will exist at a width of 3 atoms, and this is not factoring in the possibility of more efficient sources of microprocessing power beyond silicon (quantum computers) being discovered and developed before this time.

Microscopic robots called Nanobots will someday be capable of entering the body's blood stream and systems including brain and augment the physiological form. Such Nano machines would act on programming instructions or cooperative AI, and be built on the atomic scale. Their purposes will run the gamut of functions from medicinal to cosmetic. For example, some nanobots will act as pathogen suppressors and antibodies attacking programmed harmful viruses and bacteria injecting them with a neutralizing chemical or self destroying themselves with the intent of killing the foreign agent. Some Nanobots will attach or embed themselves to regions of the brain and enhance thinking skills, spawning the formation of more neurons and synaptic pathways, acting as liasons between nonbiological data sources, essentially they will become the 6th sense. Some will be used to stimulate chemical producing regions in the brain that produce certain affects like hallucination and pleasure. Sex will take on a new level of ecstacy with a nanoartifical enhanced cerebral cortex. Furthermore, the nanobots will be used to change the biological form cosmetically at a person's will capable of molding and sculpting tissues, dissolving fat cells, changing skin pigmentation and hair color, and changing a person's external appearance like changing clothing. With genetic engineering and nanoenhancement the typical person of tomorrow will be stronger, smarter, and what could be considered more beautiful. People will live very long, perhaps becoming immortal as the technologies involved become refined.

What is to become of people in the future? I often project myself as an observer in this world of distant tomorrow. One wonders whether or not many humans will merge with their artificial counterparts existing as a collective mind of individual minds or cells. The way a society like this would consider work would be to act as thinking time, essentially a part of your brain would be used to solve some issue in the collective's agenda. A grey race is formed. This image almost seems a very grim and sterile end to colorful history of humankind, however there is the equal possibility that humans will continue to maintain their emotions and individual free will no matter how far the consciousness of the mind extends. Will love still be love? Will that innate desire remain, or will cold technology envelop the species? There are many possible futures here all distinctly possible and worthy of contemplation. The way I see it, logic itself doesn't propagate ambition, human will and curiousity about that which is unknown does however. The human adventure is to experience everything possible in a lifetime and attain some sense of fulfillment. The irony of things is that machines will endevor to become more human while humans will want to become more like machines.

If you've gotten this far in this article you may have grown skeptical of the projections I've made, however I truly want you to pause and look at modern history for a moment. Examine what has happened to our society and technology since just 1900. Look how far it has come. People of those years couldn't even dream of the exotic techologies we posess to day like microwave ovens, flat panel displays, computers, cell phones, refrigerators, CD's and DVDs, (although H.G. Wells certainly invisioned "Talking Rings" didn't he? - smart man), large screen televisions, supersonic jet planes, global positioning, satellites, space probes, space stations, digital cameras, DNA, cloning, magnetic resonance imaging, nuclear power, personal camcorders, lasers, holograms, 3-D Video Games, worldwide live news, plastics, stealth technology, radar, sonar, pharmaceuticals, electron microscopes, washing machines, coffee makers, garage door openers, nightvision, radio telescopes, musical synthesizers, remote controls, motion sensors, robotic assembly, organ transplants, artificial hearts, fiber optics, etc. These previously listed technologies are just those available that I could name off the top of my head. Humanity used the gains it made in the 20th century to spawn exponential development. Comparing this past century and where society and technology is today, like it was at 1900 again, today living around the year 2000, if this trend continues things only seen as fiction will soon be commonplace. With advancement proceeding at exponential progression you can fathom the probability of the things I've described previously occuring.

With overpopulation looming ominously on the horizon of humanity's destiny on planet Earth, this technology must be used to augment and find solutions to the enevidable dilemmas facing the human race. Space colonization is a necessity if the species is to survive, and A.I. will be crucial in constructing habitable environments on other hostile planets without risking human life. Intelligent robots will be key in maintaining the efficiency and feasability of such endevors. When the time comes and man and his self aware artificial progeny coexist, a great age will commence and from here we will expand across this galaxy and beyond. Humanity and technology will merge, and each shall coexist in tandem with the other. Human ambition will drive these things forward because there are those that want to learn and obtain more knowledge about this environment that we occupy in space and time and to go beyond the simplicity of the biological human condition. Casting gaze upon the face of the creator beckons men's souls, while the creator himself was once a man.

Addendum: Interestingly enough, about a few years after writing this, in January of 2004, I came upon an interesting article in Popular Science about experiments being conducted at Duke University Center For Neuroengineering involving the technology I had described above in its infancy. These scientists essentially were able to connect the brain of a live macaque monkey to a system of electrodes and by reading the neural impulses transmitted by the monkey's brain these were converted into digital information and the monkey could control a robotic arm in a room down the hall as if it was his own arm simply by thinking about moving it. The implications for this technology are the eventual development of some kind of helmet that an amputee, paraplegic, or quadriplegic could wear and use to operate either cybernetic body parts or to stimulate a synthetic nervous system bypassing the spinal chord. The ultimate implications of this could include dream recording, hallucinogenic states of artificial consciousness.

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