Tate 1 Cover Letter

Writing this inquiry is one of the more interesting writing assignments I've had. I really enjoyed the freedom we had with choosing a topic. Being that I'm a Computer Science major, artificial intelligence is probably going to be relevant to my future career. There was a lot of information from many sources I could choose from. Most of the ones I used were scholarly peer reviewed ones, but I also found it useful to use some from online news sites/magazines to see what the media is telling the public about artificial intelligence. The most difficult thing about this paper was putting it all together. When I started writing, I really did not know what direction I wanted to go until I had written quite a lot down. With that in mind, the aspects of the paper that probably need help are the structure and pacing. At first I wanted to chronologically write down what I was researching so I could give the reader the same experience I had in the order I learned the information. At the same time though, I knew I needed to have at least a loose structure to follow. Right now, the paper has the intro, then goes into what AI is, the public opinion and how the media influences it, the possible future of AI and the consequences, and then the conclusion. In my digital essay, I will probably include more about the future and consequences because I feel that area could use some work.

Tate 2

Samuel Tate Professor Sippy English 1102 7 April 2014 Artificial Intelligence: The Public Opinion and Where it is Headed When someone hears the words artificial intelligence, there's probably a few different images that pop into their heads. It's likely they'll think of a robot of some sort, or perhaps a really smart computer that rivals that of its human counterparts. At first glance, artificial intelligence almost seems less like science and more like science fiction. In fact, it is used as a plot point in science fiction quite frequently. Many people know about artificial intelligence, they just don't know what it is and how it works. There's a lot of speculation in the field of artificial intelligence, particularly because it is in a rather early stage of development relative to other concepts. Artificial intelligence in its simplest form is computers doing things that when done by people, are described as having indicated intelligence. Defining the word intelligence can spark an endless philosophical debate, but for the sake of my arguments, a computer is intelligent when it can behave in ways humans do. An example would be a self-driving car that evaluates the area around it, and responds accordingly. Computers must be programmed by humans and be told what to do, but artificial intelligence will allow computers to react to certain situations and possibly even reprogram themselves to adjust to the current situation.

Tate 3 When investigating artificial intelligence, it is extremely important to consider the source of the information. Artificial intelligence has been mystified by the media, and the general public are being conditioned to form false beliefs. You can bet that most of the time if you hear something about artificial intelligence on the news, it is probably going to involve either some type of stereotypical humanoid robot, or perhaps a story about how computers are becoming more powerful and are replacing jobs. They may not always do this, but for the sensational type of stories they want, artificial intelligence is perfect. The main way the average person can get educated about artificial intelligence is learning how exactly a computer thinks. One key difference between the way a human thinks and the way a computer processes, is that humans can have better judgement through rules of thumb. An example of this, as described by Brooks's article, is the computer program Deep Blue. Deep Blue is a computer that has very fast processing power, special components for playing chess, and access to thousands of previous game situations. It also has perfect memory of its reasoning. Humans do not have perfect memory, and they certainly do not always have good judgement, but using heuristics (rules of thumb), they can recognize certain strategies and know what to do and when. Current computers are based on logical mechanisms, so they are procedural, meaning they follow a step by step process, that is programmed by a human. There could be variance in the path it takes based on outside variables each time the program runs, but the point is, the computer is not going to do anything it was not programmed to do. This is why some argue that computers can never truly be considered intelligent. If you compare certain activities such as teaching someone a new skill, so far, human reasoning has proved to be more effective than computers. So when the word intelligent is used to describe computers, it is meant in a different way than when referring to the actual process of human intelligence (Brooks). As mentioned earlier, there are stereotypes being made about artificial intelligence, mostly stemming from the media, but are they based on reality at all? Well, most of the time, the Artificial

Tate 4 Intelligence agent(AI) depicted in books, film, and other mediums, are fluffed up to get public attention. For example, a common theme is for a robot to be insane in some way. Writers often try and make the robots seem as human as possible, but point out one distinct difference that causes them to stand out. Some movies that immediately comes to mind are The Terminator and Short Circuit. Some common themes are: wanting to be loved, wanting to become human, paranoia, and ungrounded reasoning. So how realistic are the stereotypical portrayals of AI? A lot of it depends on the actions of the AI and if it's physically possible. If it has increased strength or faster communication, that's a realistic ability. If it can go invisible and read minds, then it's unrealistic. That being said, most depictions in cinema can actually be considered realistic, because most portrayals just make the AI have humanlike qualities with limits, with the exception of the overused emotional outbursts from computers. An illusion of emotion may be able to be created, but to date there is no real way to give a computer emotions, at least like the way humans have them. Sometimes there will be a computer that seems to know absolutely everything, but realistically, it would just have access to a large pool of preexisting information to work with. Humans cannot process information as quickly as computers, and do not have perfect memory, so if a computer had access to a mass amount of information, and was programmed in such a way that it could read the information and make decisions, it would of course run circles around any human in terms of speed. This notion causes some people to fear computers surpassing humans and movies have picked up on that fear and cashed in on it. It is basic psychology that when humans find a concept that is mystifying and complex, they will often substitute in their own speculative beliefs to satisfy the urge to know. Artificial intelligence is still a relatively new field. Computing in general has a very fast evolution. Taking a look at the last decade demonstrates this. If someone were to tell me in the year 2000 that within 10 years there would be tablet computers and smart phones that have applications such as Siri, I probably would not have believed them. Even with this being said, there is still a lot of information to be discovered but people

Tate 5 will always fall back onto superstition. This has been proven time and time again throughout history. What makes it even more difficult to teach the public about artificial intelligence, is that it's complex and hard to understand. Even those who work in the computing field sometimes struggle to grasp the concept of a smart computer. There are numerous existing surveys conducted that gauge public opinion on artificial intelligence. Some of the common questions asked by researchers are: Do people understand what Artificial Intelligence actually is; Are people afraid of artificial intelligence; and Where do people think AI is headed in the future? Anytime you want public opinion, the structure of the questions asked are very important. The best answers seem to come from specific questions, but not so specific that they can be answered with a yes or no. (will reference a specific survey here) When asked Will artificially intelligent systems exceed all reasoning abilities of the human brain at some point? 62% of answerers said no, and the other 38% said yes. I was rather surprised by this considering we probably haven't even seen the true potential of artificial intelligence (Brooks). 38% is pretty significant considering the question stated computer systems would be more capable than humans at ANY given task. Considering the general public really does not know that much about artificial intelligence, it is interesting that many people cling to their presuppositions. This phenomenon is not unique to artificial intelligence and could spark an entirely new inquiry into how psychology works. Using Survey Monkey, I created a survey that asked pretty basic questions about the involvement of the media on issues such as artificial intelligence as my primary research. A common answer to the question What kinds of images come to mind when hearing the words artificial intelligence? was the Terminator or some other robotic themed movie. When asked about whether the way media portrays is accurate or not, there were a lot of mixed responses. Some said no, while others were hesitant to say yes or no, but felt it could be accurate with a bit of Hollywood's touch to make the movie more entertaining. People seem to feel that artificial intelligence will affect their lives, but more so in the future. Out of curiosity, I decided to ask the same question from a professional

Tate 6 survey conducted. I asked Do you believe that one day artificially intelligent systems will exceed all reasoning abilities of the human brain? I left it open as an essay question but looking back, that could have been a mistake. Almost every answer was leaning towards both sides and was hesitant to pick one or the other. This information is actually useful as it shows the public really is not sure and needs more time and information to decide. Naturally after learning how the media is affecting public opinion, I wanted to learn from the professionals where artificial intelligence is actually headed. Believe it or not, there is still controversy even between professionals. I did not expect there to be a set of universal beliefs, but the disparity between opinions is something to be marveled at. Dr. Kevin Curran, a technical expert at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, was interviewed at the Mobile World Congress. When asked about the future of AI, he said The scope of Artificial Intelligence is huge. We tend to associate AI in its grandest form as a Humanoid Robot communicating with us as portrayed in movies such as Blade Runner . The truth is more mundane but shows that AI software is running underneath all sorts of modern technological tasks from autopilot to the magnificent gyroscope ability of Segways. Anywhere that 'fast fuzzy type' decisions needs to be made there is some Artificial Intelligence involved (Bell). He is basically saying that when people think of artificial intelligence, they usually automatically jump to robots, and think of it as something in our future, when in reality, there's many working examples of artificial intelligence that we take advantage of everyday. One of the more realistic forms of future AI seen by Curran are robotic cars that will drive for us. Right now, Google is the leader of the self-driving car. If this can be perfected, it could make humans' lives safer and simpler (Bell). Unfortunately the drawback is any type of automation to replace manual labor will replace people's jobs. One of the more publicized examples of AI is Watson, the program created by I.B.M. It beat two of the world's best Jeopardy players. Watson has access to about 200 million pages of

Tate 7 information and can understand natural language queries. Watson wasn't originally going to be tested on Jeopardy though, instead as an expert adviser to doctors. With Watson's extensive knowledge of medical conditions, it could aid someone in diagnosing illnesses. I.B.M. announced that Watson will be used in technical support and sales applications because as many as 61 percent of all telephone support calls currently fail because humans are unable to give correct or complete information (Markoff). Utilizing a machine that has access to so much information would greatly improve the accuracy of which the calls are handled. Once again, that brings up the issue of taking away jobs. An important thing to think about is whether or not making our lives safer and simpler is worth scrambling up employment opportunities. Every single career nowadays involves some sort of technology, and it is likely that those pieces of technology could be improved even further. This makes me think about the industrial revolution and how it changed the way of life for everyone. The work force changed so drastically and the economy shifted to rely on it. This made me question what will come next. Will there be another revolution that reshapes how our workforce operates? My investigation into artificial intelligence has affirmed and denied some of my initial thoughts. Coming into my inquiry, I hypothesized correctly that the general public would not know much about artificial intelligence and would rely on the media to interpret it for them. However, I could not have possibly imagined some of the wild beliefs people have and the fear that stems from them. This begs the question of what other concepts the media has control of. In my inquiry process, I also learned that most of the answers to my initial questions only initiated more questions. Since artificial intelligence is still evolving, more and more avenues on inquiry open up. If I was writing conducting an inquiry ten years from now, I imagine it would be so different. Only time will tell.

Tate 8 Works Cited

Bell, Lee. "AI will play a vital role in our future, just don't expect robot butlers." Inquirer. 14 Mar

2014: n. page. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.

Brooks, Rodney A. Intelligence without representation. Artificial intelligence 47.1 (1991): 139-159

Fisher, Robert. AI and Cinema-Does artificial insanity rule?.Division of Informatics at University of

Edinburgh. N.p..Web. 18 Mar 2014

Markoff, John. "The Rapid Advance of Artificial Intelligence."New York Times. 14 Oct 2013: n. page.

Web. 5 Apr. 2014.

McCarthy, John, and Patrick Hayes. Some philosophical problems from the standpoint of artificial

intelligence. USA: Stanford University, 1968.