It's been a while since SwitchBlade posted a comment here, mostly as they've been appearing in Your Symbian *subscribe now*. So it was felt that the time was right for another. With all the recent goings on with releases of the Matrix and Terminator 3 coming soon, it is time for a look at A.I.

A.I. or Artificial Intelligence to give it it's full name, is an idea stretching back to Asimov with the main thrust being to create a machine that can ideally think in the same way as a human. In films this usually culminates in the A.I. disagreeing with it's human "masters", as with Skynet in Terminator deciding to eradicate all human life, the machines in the Matrix rising up after years of slavery to steal man's dominance and make him their slave, or in the case of the anime Bubblegum Crisis flaws being used in the A.I. to control and manipulate the machines to someone's evil goal.

The achievement in most films interpretations of A.I. is that an almost perfect interpretation of human intelligence is created and the machine either lacks a conciense, percieves a threat from us, or just get's annoyed at being as used as a slave. In the short term, or at least the forseeable future, this type of A.I. is not going to be easilly created as in creating the A.I. you give the machine rules and these create choices, as the machine encounters a problem it has to choose an option based on the rules it has been given. We lack the ability to create intelligence with a broad enough spectrum of rules and choice so as to create machines that will turn round and decide we are worth killing, but despite the lack of advanced A.I. programming A.I. does exist in the world around us.

A.I. vacuum cleaners exist, and lawn mowers on similar principles. The vacuum cleaner moves around the room and uses it's A.I. to avoid obstacles such as walls and furniture, the lawn mowers use it to avoid plants not meant to be cut down. The machine's life is based on rules, the vacuum cleaner for example know's it's world is flat and that anything going up above floor height must be cleaned around. Now imagine that someone for a joke places the vacuum cleaner in a hall above some stairs, as it goes about it's business the vacuum cleaner will not have encountered stairs, and being programmed for a small room will not have any rules designed for what choice to make here, now as the stair is not an obstacle the obvious choice is for the cleaner to carry on cleaning and end up in a pile at the bottom of the stairs. To make the cleaner work around stairs the programming will need to be advanced and the A.I. will have more options when it encounters that situation. It will not have the intelligence to learn from it's mistake first time and alter it's own rules, as it will invariably not realise it did anything wrong as the choice it made made sense in it's programming.

Creating an A.I. is like bringing up a child, you teach the child the rules of life, such as stepping out in front of a bus is dangerous, that flames are hot, and to stop it or they'll go blind. The A.I. needs teaching all the rules that will govern it in it's existence, and to save time and money only the necessary rules will be given to the A.I., as for learning for itself this would involve a very extensive set of rules so that the A.I. knew what it was attempting to do and could decide whether it suceeded or not. A.I. can only be used in sections, like the doctor program where you enter your symptoms and the A.I. checks it's extensive record of illnesses for one that best matches the criteria set to it, in a similar manner to the way a real doctor would, although the A.I. would not be able to diagnose from any more than basic symptoms where a real doctor would be able to use various senses to make diagnosies from his/her experience.

While A.I. is something we encounter everyday in one form or another, it is a long way from becoming something that will attempt to take over the world on a whim, correction, it isn't that far away but that relies on the people who can decide they want to take over the world to not institute A.I. to do it for them. A.I. can help make the world a better place for people, it can also make it a worse place depending on who designs and create's the A.I. Creating the ideal A.I. is a long way off, and when/if that does happen hopefully people will look at the project *very* carefully, and not make mistakes as seen in films where the A.I. is too "free" and intelligence and certain rules are maintained to protect us, and the A.I. from itself.

Probably the worst comment I've written so far, but hell, I'm just killing time until I'm off to work. Let me know what you think, make some comments.