Artificial Intelligence

I'm going to stretch beyond the realm of gaming, and talk about Artificial Intelligence. Not gaming intelligence, but general intelligence.

Computer scientists claim that one day, possibly in 20 years, AI will be as smart or smarter than humans. I say that's pure science fiction, and will always remain as such.

Now, AI is nothing but computer code. That's it. The limits of a programming language limit how intelligent the AI can be. Yes, there are procedural algorithms that can help a program "learn" more natural behavior, but I don't think that's really going to help AI become as intelligent as humans.

Another road block, which is probably the most significant, is voice recognition. Spoken words, to computers, are nothing more than noise. A series of bits generated by an audio wave. The computer can look at that data as much as it wants, and it can't interpret it. The way voice recognition works is it compares this data pattern from your voice, and compares it to a large database of words. It then decides that the closest matching pattern is what you said. One problem comes in if the person has a speech impediment, or a thick accent. Their deviations from common speech patterns in the program's database can yield vastly different results.

Yet more problems in voice recognition come from the fact that, since the computer has no earthly idea what exactly you said (beyond matching voice patterns), it also has no grasp on the rules of language. Since it doesn't know what you said, this doesn't really matter. But, this becomes an issue due to the large amount of homophones in the English language. The computer can't tell the difference between your and you're, or to, two, and too.

Without the ability of language, it can't be as intelligent as humans.

One last hurdle is that we still don't know how the human brain works. I mean, how it truly works. We can't simulate what we don't know. People have these theories of Artificial Intelligence taking over the world. AI is only as smart as we make it. AI is only computer code. It is limited by both the hardware, the programming language, and the person programming it. Right now, AI is very advanced, but also very focused on a specific purpose. To make a true human analogue, it has to be advanced in every way. And I just don't see this happening anytime soon. As for AI that will take over the world, that would require AI with a sense of self, a need for self preservation, and a conscious desire to dominate over humans. I don't think that will ever be possible.