Can Computers Think? Essay

Neil Postman, a firm protester against technology, begins his argument in The Judgement of Thamus with a parable about a king rejecting an inventor who incorporates writing into their society; the king, Thamus, is steadfast in his belief that writing’s future burdens will outweigh its immediate success. Postman argues that technological discoveries change the way we think, manipulating our culture and our understanding of the world. He states that the primary difference between computers and humans is the ability to self-learn - but what happens when the human race conquers that barrier with technology? Artificial Intelligence is often referred to as the "field I would most like to be in" by researchers in other sciences (semanticscholar.org). It is not only prominent in subfields like reasoning and logic, but also in precise tasks like playing chess, proving theorems, and diagnosing diseases. The short-term benefits of Artificial Intelligence depend on who controls it, while the long-term benefits of Artificial Intelligence depend on if we can control it at all. When considering synthetic intelligence, I believe our outlook must be cautiously positive. As Postman suggests, the development of technology has significant advantages and disadvantages. Futurists believe AI will redefine the human world by enabling software’s ability to self-program and by minimizing the time it takes to solve a challenge. However, the safety issues and current jobs that will be replaced by

In our recent negotiation, my partner Dave and I assumed the roles of Alan Hacker, a computer software developer, and Alan Hacker’s lawyer. Being the lawyer in the negotiation my objective was to avoid litigation with my client’s partner Stanley Star and to aid in the continuation of my client’s co-owned company HackerStar. In addition, I would assist Hacker in coming to an agreement that would be satisfying for him both personally and financially. I felt that Dave and I presented a reasonable argument on Hacker’s behalf and, since I was able to apply some of our class readings during the process, I was overall pleased with the outcome.

. Albert Einstein once said, “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation full of idiots” (Einstein). Unfortunately, that day has already come as technology has far beyond exceeded human interaction.

Albert Einstein declared “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” It is important to remember that Einstein said this long before all of the technological developments we know today. If he could see how far we have progressed, his proclamation would most likely be even more urgent. Many people share the fear of technology overtaking humans. Two authors, Clive Thompson, who wrote “Smarter than You Think” and Kevin Kelly, who wrote “Better than Human: Why Robots Will- and Must-Take Our Jobs,” have an optimistic view regarding the role of technology in the future. Although they use different reasoning, both Thompson and Kelly assert collaboration between humans and technology is necessary to maximize

A huge technology revolution is freely replacing millions of robots instead of humans. As in today we have a few machines that do our daily jobs. Some of the technology that are being placed with humans are ATM Machines instead of tellers, auto manufactures which is an automotive industry that develops cars, travel agents, cashiers, transportation and material moving, production, medicine and services. Very soon, people will realize that the very thing they created to make life easier is creating a life of its own. Computers have become a species that no one has yet realized. Here are a few examples on how technology is taking over with our working field. As you know El Centro California has two hospitals in Imperial Valley. But one of these hospitals has a robotic hand called Da Vinci. Da Vinci is a Robotic system that works as an extension of the surgeon who uses computer controlled instruments to operate through tiny openings in the body. But here is the bad thing about having instruments that do surgical procedures on a human, because unlike a human doctor, who can detect or feel things with their eyes, ears or

Alan Turing, as a Physicalist, saw the mind as the brain, since the brain is the physical object. Applying such views to machines, Turing’s Imitation Game ‘test’ is supposed to demonstrate his claim that certain machines should count as “thinking things” in the same way that we humans do. His argument being that, if a machine could imitate a human well enough to deceive a person that it was not a machine, then it should be considered “conscious.” He found that since most of what we base our foundation of consciousness on (our judgments and interactions with others), if we cannot see the responder in the game (i.e. the computer), and it responds as well as human, then it should also be considered a “thinking thing.” Turing also expected that one day machines would be able to imitate our minds so well, that we would not be able to tell the difference between a real mind or “thinking thing,” and a

Living in the technology age has opened up doors for many different types of technology. Computers are very helpful to todays life because they assist you in memory and activity. This raises the question, can computers think. Turning believed that computers can think because he believes computers has the necessary general intelligent action to think. Searle argues against the idea saying “only a very special kinds of machines, namely brains” can think. I agree with Searle’s argument because computers don’t have brains, but are programmed to do what humans want it to do. I disagree with Turning’s argument because computers are specifically programmed by humans to do what we want them to do.

hidden humans. In any given session, there would be six imitation games running in parallel, and one given interrogator would meet all five answering machines and five hidden humans. The authors claim that the judges and hidden humans involved all were selected from a wide variety of backgrounds—both male and female, both adults and teenagers, some who already knew about the Turing test beforehand and others who did not. In this paper, the authors examined the data they had acquired in the tests to study what constitutes good machine performance in Turing’s imitation game.

It is worth noting that Turing and his concepts first surprisingly cropped up in a mainstream piece of genre defining speculative science fiction relying on real research for ideas six years prior. As Andrew Hodges notes, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick drew upon the concepts in On Computable Numbers and the idea of playing an “Imitation Game” with a virtual intelligence. They created a sinister exploration of the potential for an AI to deceive and kill in the film (later book) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). 9 10

Robots in ten years or any year could own the future, they could take over the world or just take over people's jobs. Along with a welding job and many other jobs in the world. Robots will rule over the human intelligence, maybe today, tomorrow or sometime in the near future.

The conditions of the present scenario are as follows: a machine, Siri*, capable of passing the Turing test, is being insulted by a 10 year old boy, whose mother is questioning the appropriateness of punishing him for his behavior. We cannot answer the mother's question without speculating as to what A.M. Turing and John Searle, two 20th century philosophers whose views on artificial intelligence are starkly contrasting, would say about this predicament. Furthermore, we must provide fair and balanced consideration for both theorists’ viewpoints because, ultimately, neither side can be “correct” in this scenario. But before we compare hypothetical opinions, we must establish operant definitions for all parties involved. The characters in

Alan Turing’s simple explanation of the imitation game is as follows: the game consists of three participants. Participant A is a man, participant B is a woman, and participant C is the interrogator (can be a man or woman). In the Imitation Game, participant C is placed in a different room from participant A and B (they are represented as X and Y). The interrigator can communicate with them via written notes. By asking questions of participant A and participant B, the interrigator tries to determine which of the two is the man and which is the woman. Participant A's role is to trick the interrogator into making the wrong decision, while participant B attempts to assist the interrogator in making the right

The Turing Test, created by Alan Turing, tests for intelligence in a systematic way, giving intelligence an operational meaning. Turing believed that humans could one day create an artificial intelligence (AI for short) — since his definition was liberal. The basic premise of the Turing Test is that

In attempting to answer the question of whether machines are able to think, Turing redesigns the question around the notion of machines’ effectiveness at mimicking human cognition. Turing proposes to gauge such effectiveness by a variation of an ‘imitation game,’ where a man and a woman are concealed from an interrogator who makes

Artificial Intelligence is a topic within the public media that has existed for decades, but is now a concern due to the reality of human advancement and innovation in the field of science and technology. Many people believe that computers will become self-aware or sentient and view humanity as a disposable resource and gain supremacy. Reasoning that research on the technology should halt and not become more advance. Whereas others believe they will help catapult research and the economy forward, supporting the operations and innovations the technology offers. The complicated and divided solutions to the debate aren’t obvious, but there are more benefits to improving artificial intelligence than there is stopping it. Therefore, the negative effects people believe will occur can be resolved.