Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the science of programming computers to have intelligently. AI was born in the 1950s, as researchers tried to program computers to mimic the ways in which humans solved problems. In the past two decades, AI research often conducted by teams including both psychologists and computer scientists has advanced dramatically.
AI researchers have focused On programming computers to perform operations that seem basic to human thought: storing and retrieving information and using logical principles to solve problems. In the view of many AI experts,the steps that a computer follows in processing information are fundamentally the same as the mental steps that humans take in carrying out the same activities . If this view is Correct, an intelligent computer can serve a.s a model Of the human mind and programs for solving specific problems amount to models of how humans solve these problems.
The Future of Artificial Intelligence
What is the future of artificial intelligence? One exciting new approach involves computers that mimic the human brain. Until recently, computers have been limited to serial processing, in which signals are relayed along a single path. But the new machines and programs do their information processing in parallel. Like the neural networks in the brain, these new computers known as neural net machines—send and process signals along millions of pathways simultaneously. Some researchers believe that such parallel processing offers the best chance for computers to do the things that have traditionally been hardest for computers and easiest for humans such as seeing, hearing, learning, and exercising common sense.
While computers ever become more intelligent than the humans who w programmed them? Although most people would consider this notion absurd, not all AI researchers rule it out. Hans Moraver boldly predicts that by the year 2030 you’ll be able to buy a $1,000 personal computer that’s just as smart as you are.
What does worry some observers, however, is that we may become too dependent on computers to solve all sorts of problems, from medicine to foreign affairs. For in the last analysis, no matter how smart, creative, witty, and charming computers may become, human beings must take ultimate responsibility for the computers’ recommendations the humans, after all, put the “intelligence” into the computer in the first place and for deciding whether or not to follow them.
