Can machines think?

• An age-old question: “How do we think?”
• With the creation of computers came the belief that we will be able to reproduce intelligence using computers
• What is intelligence anyway?
• And what do we mean by artificial intelligence?

And even before we invented the computer, we attempted to create

copies of ourselves . . . .

Historical Attempts: Frankenstein

• Original story by Mary Shelley “Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus”, published in 1818, describes an attempt by scientist Victor Frankenstein to create artificial life

The Turk

• In 1770 Wolfgang von Kempelen constructed an automaton that could play chess and perform a Knight’s tour
• Shown at numerous exhibitions for 80 years across Europe and America
• Merely a skillfully constructed mechanical device for illusionists

 Amazon Mechanical Turk

• A large number of people payed to perform HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) – tasks requiring human intelligence
• “Artificial Artificial Intelligence”, crowdsourcing

Robot

• In 1921 Czech writer Karel Capek wrote the play ˇ R. U. R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)
• Robot (Czech robota) – labour, forced labour

Isaac Asimov: “I, robot”, 1942

Three Robot Laws:

• A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm
• A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law
• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law 

I, Robot (20th Century Fox, 2004)

Computers and electronic brains

• ENIAC, the first electronic computer, was developed in 1945
• In the early era of computer development, computers were considered equivalent to electronic brains

 Can machines think?

• Today, we use computers to control complex processes, for solving complex problems, decision making, reasoning, natural language . . .

Rodney Brooks i robot Cog, MIT Media Lab