When “AlphaGo,” Google’s new super-smart game-playing
computer dominated Lee Sedol, Korea’s so-called “Go Master” in five games
of the ancient Chinese board game “Go,” doomsayers felt that they have
approached the end-game: It is time for humans to cash in their chips –– the
era of artificial intelligence has arrived.
Go is an abstract strategy board game in which two
players attempt to capture more territory than the opponent. The game seems
simple enough when explained that way, but it was one of the only board games
that had been considered unbeatable by computers. The number of possible moves
in go easily surpasses the number of atoms in the universe, so winning by brute
force, the endless trial and error method used by programs to eventually find a
solution (rathe than using some ntellectual strategy, was and still is not a
feasible tactic. To everyone’s surprise, however, AlphaGo systematically dismantled
the 18-time world champion in a 4-1 victory. Although Lee narrowly clinched a
win in Game Four, the forethought, the unpredictability, and the ease that
AlphaGo demonstrated in the other four games revealed that AI technology has
drastically improved and humans have a lot to learn from the program.
What scares a lot of people about AlphaGo is the very
fact that it did not employ brute force to beat a Go master. People understand
and accept that computers perform basic functions, such as calculation and
information recall, better than human beings. However, in order to become the
best at Go, one needs creativity and innovation––the traits that are uniquely
associated with the human race. In Game Two, AlphaGo displayed something that
can only be considered as creative, innovative, and even beautiful. Its move 37
was a highly unorthodox maneuver that everyone assumed to be a mistake, but
over 100 turns later, it became apparent that it was the winning move.
By the means of machine learning and tree search
techniques, AlphaGo learns the opponent’s style by watching how he plays and
collecting relevant data. These pattern recognition techniques allow the
program to dynamically predict his next move and to simultaneously calculate the
best maneuver it could execute when facing that particular approach. This is
not something humans don't do. By contrast, this is mimicking a distinct human
trait, which becomes the basis for the excitement of thinking about its endless
possibilities and applications as well as the fear that robots will eventually
replace humans. Moreover, AlphaGo self-trains and self-improves by playing
against other instances of itself, leading some to conjure up the harrowing picture
of robots creating other robots to take over society.
The rise of artificial intelligence technology also
raises a lot of profound philosophical questions. If artificial intelligence
can operate at the same level as a human being, what does it mean to be truly
human? And how do we define God, if we are able to create beings that can
think, rationalize, innovate, and function better than we do? Are we breaching
the realm of God and stealing the title for ourselves, or do we worship the
almighty AIs that we created as our new gods?
Such existential questions, coupled with the natural
fear of the unknown, which science zealously explores, understandably plant
seeds of doubt and fear into people’s minds. Indeed, the fear of technology and
science is nothing new. It pervaded history and manifested itself in literature
as well as popular culture. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein to
show that pursuing knowledge beyond accepted human limits is extremely
dangerous. People in the 19th century enthusiastically agreed
with Shelley, as the novel became an immediate best seller. Hollywood has again
and again explored this topic with great commercial success, one of them
being I, Robot––a movie about a dystopian society ruled by
robots. The film was inspired by Issac Asimov’s short-story collection of the
same name, which reflects the concerns and fears of the atomic age. Each
time, people believed that it was game over for them –– a new technology would
surely destroy the world soon.
Fortunately, humans emerged victorious, and the game
continued. Even today, the doubts and fears about new technology neither
provide sufficient grounds for nervously anticipating our doomsday nor present
a need to kneel and pray to the AI gods that we will never reach the
technological singularity. And we certainly must not delay or halt the development
of artificial intelligence and robotics technology. By contrast, we need to
embrace and promote such technologies for the betterment of society and human
race. After all, those past technological advances that people feared have
significantly improved and benefited our society. Likewise, the field of
artificial intelligence will not replace human life; the technology exists to
extend our longevity and enhance our quality of life.
The deep-learning technology AlphaGo employs has the
potential to revolutionize everything we touch and use. Its ability to learn
and predict its user’s behavior and preference by utilizing machine learning
techniques and deep neural networks are crucial to improving our society in
many respects. These methodologies are already being used as key components of
inventing self-driving cars. More efficient data processing would allow us to
categorize the Internet in a way that will end the days of hour-long Google
searches to get the results that only moderately resemble what you wanted.
Domestic robots equipped with advanced AI will flawlessly assess and fulfill
their owners’ needs based on pre-programming and newly gained experiences on
the job, greatly benefiting the elderly and disabled population. Medical robots
will be able to perform difficult surgery with pinpoint accuracy and precision,
and they will only become more reliable after multiple uses. With a certain
amount of luck, it might one day even be able to make DMV offices operate
properly.
With such useful applications and more, it becomes
difficult to justify holding an aversion to the advent of AI technology based
on the irrational fear that Siri might one day ask you for directions to
AlphaGo’s house (although she would already know it). I, for one, welcome our
new AI overlords since they would undoubtedly improve almost every aspect of
our lives.
Even though AI cannot replace the hands of a surgeon, or battlefield technicians at this moment, the prospects of what AIs can do is becoming more and more promising. AlphaGo has proven that the Artificial Intelligence research and development is rapidly advancing. This machine has beat the world’s best Go player Lee Sedol, by winning four games out of five, which is indeed the first time a machine has ever beaten its most skilled human counterpart. And just like what you said, the prospects are bright. Even though many people fear that AIs might take over the world, I believe that its development can significantly improve the quality of our lives. People once believed that the earth was flat and feared that traveling too far into the horizon would make them fall out of the planet. Some people feared that telephones would invade people’s privacy and criticized Alexander Graham Bell for creating the instrument of the Devil. TVs were thought to emit dangerous X-rays even after such problem had been long resolved. We also though Wi-Fis would emit invisible radiation that would cause terrible health effects. But everything only turned out to be significantly beneficial to our lives. I am excited to see what the advancing AI technology has in store for us.
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