As seen in: Virus, Mass Effect, Halo, a million and one others…

“I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that…”

“…Skynet becomes self aware.”

“Oh God I’m so depressed…”

“Hey be careful there’s two of us in here now remember!”

For bonus geek points, match the above quotes to the famous A.Is (Answers at the end of the article).

What is AI anyway?

Man… how do you define A.I? To begin with how do we define actual intelligence? Tough call really, but the idea most people settle for is that an AI should have the ability to do several things that life forms are able to do. They should be able to learn, they should be able to interact, and they should be able to expand beyond the confines of their creation. What is intelligence if not the ability to learn, adapt, and thrive?

What we’re leaving out here of course is sentience; the ability to recognize ones own existence. It’s very likely that the first A.Is might have no concept of their own existence at all, and possibly behave more like animals (and posses a similar level of intelligence). The other thing we need to look at is Artificial Life, this is essentially a very complex AI that behaves as a living creature, and in theory can fulfill all of the scientific prerequisites of life: Movement (from one computer to another, or a robotic frame), Reproduction (sharing code to create a new AI with characteristics of its parents), Sensitivity (the ability to be aware of surroundings), Nutrition (could electrical consumption count?), Excretion (harder one, but exhaust from a robotic body?), Respiration, (Combustion?), and Growth (As it learns it will take up more space on a disk drive right?).

AI in reality

But I’m getting ahead of myself and jumping into the world of philosophy. Lets have a look at a video shall we? This video explains a few of the most important concepts of future computing including the collapse of Moore’s law, and Quantum computing (Which we will cover later):

Now, Kaku was talking about how our current robots have the intelligence of a retarded cockroach. This is illustrated in the next video that I’m going to show you, which comes from the TED conference, and is delivered by Hod Lipson. In this video he demonstrates how he has built several robots, and rather than programming them how to move, or even in one case how they should be built, he has let the Robots figure it out for themselves.

Let me put it another way: Lipson’s robots learn, and evolve, by themselves, with no interference from humans. Now if this isn’t an example of the building blocks of AI, I don’t know what is:

If you think about this for a moment, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that it’s pretty exciting stuff, yet also somewhat scary. Think the T-800 from Terminator 2; even skynet didn’t want it learning too much. And what if we combined the concept of those cube robots with nanotechnology? A growing, evolving colony of machines on the nanometer level.

At the moment though, it isn’t likely we’re going to be conquered by droids any time soon as computers just aren’t powerful enough to support that level of intelligence. It would be like trying to run mass effect on a commodore 64. But that brings us full circle back to quantum computing.

Quantum computing

This is an exceptionally complex topic, and really is on the cutting edge of contemporary science. It’s hard to explain, and not people understand it fully, but let’s give it a shot eh?

First, we need to identify the main difference between quantum, and regular computers. Current computers are built around the laws of classical physics; they use electrons as the main means to do their calculations. Quantum computers can work on individual atoms, which while larger than electrons, are not subject to quantum uncertainty, and so can be used on a smaller scale than even the smallest electron based system can allow. Quantum uncertainty means that an electron can be almost anywhere within in a 3-5 atom radius of where you think it should be, as well as sometimes not being there at all!

Basically, all we need to know is that size for size, a quantum computer has the potential to be far more powerful than a digital computer. But that’s not all there is to this story.

Quantum computers also work differently on a fundamental level. They obey the laws of quantum, rather than classical physics. Rather than computing in Bits, these systems compute in what are called “Quibits”, or quantum bytes. Basically, calculations are done by bouncing a laser (or some other beam) off an atom. By measuring the reflected beam, calculations can be made using normal Boolean logic. The atoms themselves, provide a sort of analogue binary computer system. Basically, data isn’t just a 0 or 1, but can be anywhere in between them, allowing quantum computers to do real multitasking, unlike modern computers which cannot actually multitask. Starting to sound more like how an animal brain works yet? It’s all pretty confounding, but if you do some research for yourself, you can get the gist of it.

To help you get going, here are some resources:

• A very good introductory article can be found here.
• A more advanced article can be found here.
• Google Tech Talks, released three lectures on the subject: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.

Oh and the famous AI’s where:

• HAL 9000 (2001 a space odyssey)
• The T-800. (Terminator 2)
• Marvin (Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy)
• Cortana (Halo 1)

Have you been interested by this?

There are other articles related to this one that you can view!

• Rail guns
• Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computers
• Orbital Weapons
• Nanotechnology
• Time Travel