Saturday, August 27, 2005

artificially intelligent

Computers are relatively new inventions; it’s been only two decades since we have been introduced to them. But now it is a requisite to most of us! Imagine carrying pages and pages of sheet wherever we went rather than carrying a 4-inch floppy. The amount of sophistication and simplicity machines have brought into our lives is simply astounding. Imagine going through so many soporific books to write an assignment, rather than simply search through the web and know the recent advancements. Even though computers and machines have brought about significant improvement in our lives, they lack something that we the Homo sapiens proudly possess,” intelligence”.

The intelligent species did not leave it at that, they have and still are trying to develop machines that equal the intelligence human beings are blessed with. To put it in technical language, artificial intelligence is “the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines.”

computers can be easily trained to perform monotonous and repetitive jobs with algorithms. But how to train a machine to act based on logic and reasoning? If a machine could do that, then they could be even called autonomous, where in they can learn, communicate and teach each other. They can navigate their way around our world and be linked to extremely powerful computers that will give them a processing capacity well beyond that of humans.

scientists primarily believed that studying the structure of the human brain would give them an idea to develop such a machine. But alas!, the human brain is not such a simple creation to duplicate, with its numerous neurons and sensors. Artificial intelligence research makes the assumption that human intelligence can be reduced to the (complex) manipulation of symbols, and that it does not matter what medium is used to manipulate these symbols - it does not have to be a biological brain.

Now intelligence means the computer must even possess emotional intelligence, the computer must be able to give its views on a particular article or poem .The computer in this case will just simulate intelligent behavior or rather say just emulate the habits and practices of its master. Could a computer be called intelligent in that case? It will just follow guidelines as in an instruction manual, rather than have its own thoughts and ideas. Imagine you don’t know a language and u look into a handbook to find out what word to use in that context, the robot would merely be doing the same.

There are many tasks, which we might reasonably think require intelligence - such as complex arithmetic - which computers can do very easily. Conversely, there are many tasks that people do without even thinking - such as recognizing a face - which are extremely complex to automate.

But ai isn’t an easy task either. Making a robot do a task involves a thorough understanding of the task and the various techniques of doing it.

Any innovation has to be the result of some basic necessity. , "Friendly AI" is the theoretical knowledge needed to understand goals and choices in artificial minds, and the engineering knowledge needed to create cognitive content, design features, and cognitive architectures that result in benevolence.

But do we need machines with spirituality and creativity? Though most of us have an extremely strong bond with machines and spend majority of our lives with them, would we ever like machines competing with us?

If this intelligence or abstract attribute could be taught to machines, it would re-conceptualize the perception of machines. It will fundamentally change the way we will live in the third millennium. Who knows, my best friend could be Ms. Amy Robot …We have to still live to see it…

Thursday, August 11, 2005

final year life

there is a kind of settled feeling now! even though i have such wavering thoughts!!!!! my desire to go 2 US has never been tis much! i mean i feel so strongly tat i shd go 2 us.. but wats da hindrance... i cant study anymore esp tis technical stuff!!my desire to join siemens is also great! wow , the amazing office, the people there.. wat ambience, i jus fell in love with da company!!da interview experience was amazing!
not jus da idea of studying is a hindrance to go 2 US, but i have no clue wat i shd specialise on, wat kind of job opportunities ill have if i choose a particular university, its like i have abs no clue....
n the latest development is i wanna do ma MBA, da idea of marketing, HR and finance appeal so much to me... i feel so attracted to all da three.. how amazing it would be to manage people , have ma own company.. simply superb...