ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

ARE WE THE LAST GENERATION

A PRIMER

BY

ABHIDEEP BHATTACHARJEE

Copyright Declaration

This primer is the intellectual property of Abhideep Bhattacharjee © May 2015. Printing, publishing orduplication of this material by any means will without the author’s consent will be deemed a violation of the

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

Artificial Intelligence – Are We The Last GenerationAuthor: Abhideep Bhattacharjee

© May 2015Format: Electronic Copy

Cover Illustration: Sanjib Adhya

About the author Abhideep Bhattacharjee is highly interested in the development of Science and Technology and its impact on thecommon people. He writes to share his ideas and excitements with a wider audience. He is equally suave in fiction aswell as non-fiction writing. Presently smitten with the subject of Artificial Intelligence, his next project includes afictional trilogy based on the back drop of the development and achievement of the AI and its impact on human life.To reach the author, please check out his author page in Amazon.

INTRODUCTION

I wrote an answer on machine intelligence some time back in Quora. A user had askedwhat will humans do if machines ultimately get smart enough to do most (read all) ofour tasks. A seemingly harmless question, borne out of a sense of leisurely curiosity(type of curious questions that pop-up in your mind when you have nothing better to do)I have come across similar version of questions in other places (what will coders do ifwe develop softwares which can create new softwares?) Questions like these neverbothered me much. I always thought the reason these questions were being asked wasbecause some people were scared of a job shortage that may appear in the near future asa result of most things going autonomous. This I figured was the same kind of securityissue people faced before the industrial revolution. So I tried to console the user byarguing that machines can never be intelligent beyond a point. I went on to describe thata machine, no matter how intelligent, will always require a human intervention tooperate and that a super-smart, self -thinking, machine or program or robot is still asubject for the movie makers. I wrote that answer in avid detail using terms likecomparative logic and creative logic to make my answer seem more credible than itactually is. Then I waited for my upvotes. But what followed was a comment. A Machine Intelligence Programmer vehementlycontradicted my stupidity for thinking that machines (read programs) are dumb and areincapable of thinking on their own. (A Machine Intelligence Programmer, is someonewho teaches a machine or a software to think on its own) He went on to explain thatMachine Intelligence, more commonly referred to as Artificial Intelligence (AI), hascome a long way and will soon take up all of human activities. Really? I thought! Arethere programs which can actually think and decide? Are computers learning to think bytheir own? Will they be able to do things without human intervention? I started up aconversation with some people who, even if not experts in the field of ArtificialIntelligence and Machine learning, at least have a sound knowledge about it. What Ilearnt was enough to surge my interest in this field and over the next few weeks, Istarted reading articles, books and journals that detailed the development andchallenges in this field. I found myself equally enthralled by the promise of AIdevelopment and tenuously concerned at the associated risks it will bring. Whatsurprised me the most however was how I knew next to nothing about a technologicaldevelopment, which will have astronomical impact on humankind at large, in bothpositive and negative way - all that, well within my lifetime. It was then that I decidedthat I must write a primer detailing the most important points and developments thathave been made in this field and what the near future holds for all of us.

The purpose of writing this primer is not to provide yardstick details about the progressand road map to AI. For that, one needs to read a lot more literature. The purpose of thislittle primer is to arouse the sense of curiosity amongst all those who read this, so thatthey understand that we are all standing on the edge of a technological marvel - one thatwill push us towards either of two destinations - Immortality or Extinction! We are all playing on a sunny beach with our friends and family. The water is cold andthe sand is warm. The waves are rolling one after the other and the sea looks calm andserene. White patches of cloud are floating about in the blue sky. The kids are buildingsand castles, some are running around with a frisbee. You look around at all the happypeople. The world looks wonderful. At the horizon, the sky bends down to kiss the sea,and from this far, it is difficult to say where the sea ends and the sky begins. But all that is going to change in about 10 minutes from now. A raging Tsunami issurging towards the coast like a hungry monster. 7 minutes from now, you will see a tinybelow at the far horizon. You will try to figure out what is the strange shape. 30 secondslater, the below would have grown a tiny bit bigger and a few more people would haveobserved it by now. 20 seconds later, you will understand it's a giant wave rollingtowards the beach. Another couple of seconds later, someone would have cried out -“Tsunami, Tsunami!” and immediately, panic would have spread across the entirebeach. For the next one minute, you would observe with horror as all the happy people wouldrun like crazy, picking up their kids, screaming, hollering, scampering away from theshore. A few people would fall down in the chaos and would be stamped around by therunners. Meanwhile, the giant wave has grown upto a height of 2 feet and surging at aspeed of approximately 80 KMPH. In the next 10 seconds, the water bellows in on theshore, wiping down everything in its path. In the next 30 seconds, it gurgles down intothe city, drowning houses, cars, animals and humans. In the next one minute, all thehappy people, laughing and smiling and enjoying life, are dead. Some sceptics believe that the AI is the hypothetical Tsunami. And we are the happypeople enjoying in the sunny beach, 10 minutes from disaster. Is that a correct prediction? Should we be scared? Read on to find out!

Human Intelligence What amount of intelligence is a child born with? Many scientists believe that a childstarts to learn right from inside the womb of its mother. Pregnancy experts andpaediatricians suggest would be parents to bask in wholesome activities, which will beconducive to a child’s cognitive development. A mother listens to soft music, readsbook and talks to her baby. Is the baby listening? Is she learning? Many believe that sheis. A human child is born with a certain level of intelligence already instilled in him or her.It is believed that this basic amount of intelligence is hardcoded in the genes. But whatis more important is the fact that the child, right from the moment it is born, is highlycurious about the external world. It readily receives information about the world and itsenvironment through all possible neural inputs - auditory, optical, olfactory, touch andtaste. Not only does she receive inputs, she goes on making associations based on theseinputs. By her second birthday, a child would have learnt much more than she will everlearn in the rest of her life. That brings us to a critical question - If all children are born with the basic level ofintelligence that is coded in their genes, and if the rate of information assimilationfor the first two formative years is also about same, how come does the intelligencelevel of adults vary drastically? (from the - ‘Oh so smart!’ to the “Eh so dumb!’) Toseek the answer to this question would be a journey that will take us to the caverns ofthe human mind and its least explored corners. Interesting as it may be, we will put offthat subject for a future discussion. Presently it will suffice to appreciate that fact thathumans, and specifically all forms of higher life forms, have the capability to change thelevel of their intelligence. However, though we may have a dog who is much smarterthan another dog, none of them will ever be quite as smart as a human. This meansintelligence comes with a capping - there is a limit to how intelligent a living thing canbe. And in the history of the earth, we have so far only one animal who has surpassedthe intelligence level of all other animals by such a huge difference, that no other animalhas ever even posed a minor threat to its existence or dominance on the Earth. But thatmay soon change forever.

The quest to replicate nature

Humans have always been Nature’s favourite. Nature has somehow played some sort offavouritism that has helped us (humans) to cheat on all the other animals into owning theearth. But as it always happens with the spoilt kid, we have never been satisfied.Intoxicated with the gifts with which Nature has endowed us, we have always tried tochallenge her back. In various attempts of egoistic ardour, we have tried to recreateNature. Thus man has lighted up darkness, has flown into the air like a bird, hascommunicated across thousands of mile, has explored the deepest crevices of the ocean.Man, has always been like the new born baby - ever curious, always trying to figure outthe world around itself, and then trying to outsmart it. And we have succeeded inoutsmarting nature in more ways than we can imagine. We have harvested the naturalresources, we have turned the direction of rivers, we slit-open a human body and thenput it back together - in proper functioning mode. We have manipulated genes, tried toovercome diseases before they could even occur. We have grown crops in soils andweathers not conducive to its growth. We have predicted the laws of nature and foundways to escape it (think of a rocket escaping out of Earth’s gravity) We have rippedopen an atom and synthetically produced compounds. Even Nature may sometimes lookback upon us and wonder - I really made up a smartass of a creature over there! But are we to stop? Of course not! It has never been the nature of man to stop searchingor to stop trying to improve. Most of the time, this has resulted in the greatest gifts ofmankind (wireless communication, electricity, medicines) For some unfortunate events,these have led to catastrophic disasters (think of the atom bomb, the bio-weapons) Buthowever it may turn out to be, we will not stop our quest for improvement. To replicatenature, and then to outsmart it.

The Quest for Artificial Intelligence

We all know the ongoing research with genetic modifications. Scientists and biologistsare trying to tweak our genes to customize the nature of our babies. So basically parentswould be able to define how tall their babies would be (when they grow up) what willbe the color of their eyes and hair, the level of their intelligence, etc. Don’t get too

excited - this ain’t out in the market yet. What is already in the market is the use of stemcells to synthetically produce body tissues. If a person endures a burn on a portion of hisor her body, the common practice is to graft the skin tissue from another site of his body(called the donor site) and transplant it over the damaged site. Another practice hasstarted to gain popularity is called the Stem Cell Tissue Culture, where the stem cellsof this person is used to artificially produce skin cells and these cells are thentransplanted on the damaged tissue surface. Research is already in the sway to useSCTR (Stem Cell Tissue Culture) to produce other body tissues like retina tissues,pancreatic tissues, etc. If successful, this can cure problems like blindness and diabetes. When so much is happening in the physiological foray of the human body, isn’t itobvious that another group of people will be equally enthused about the mind part? I amnot talking here about psychologists or cognitive scientists who try to figure out theworking of the mind. We are talking about that group of scientist who are intrigued andmotivated to develop an artificial mind - a mind just like that of the humans, with thesame set of cognitive skills, able to perform the same mental functions that a human isable to and having the same level of intelligence as that of a smart human; all that - butentirely artificial. Welcome, to the world of Artificial Intelligence!

So what is an AI and where did it all begin?

Ever since man conceptualized the theory of numbers, he has tried to aid his countingmethods with a tool. Initially man started counting with his fingers. Then when theyneeded to count for numbers more than ten, he started drawing lines on walls or tablets(not the one you use these days) thereafter they started using beads and stones to keepcount. For quite some time, this seemed to serve his purpose. But man, was not meant tobe content! He started preparing devices that would be more accurate in counting anddesigned the abacus as early as 2400 BC. Over the centuries, man has constructedvarious improved computational devices, which would be more precise in calculatingand thereby doing a lot more than just calculating as - interfering from a set of data, keeprecords in store for future use and ultimately optimizing almost all fields of humanactivity to generate more accurate results.

The history of development of computer (both hardware and software) is a veryinteresting read. It will do if we fast-forward to the 20th century, when the advent ofdigital computers, as we know them today, was conceived and created. The jump fromanalog computers to digital computers was one of the most significant advances in thehistory of technology. Once transistors allowed programmers to designmicroprocessors, what followed were an array of different generation computers, eachsmarter, faster, cheaper than its predecessor and each serving as one small step towardsachievement of the penultimate goal of human ambition - Artificial Intelligence! To understand Artificial Intelligence, let us first clearly define what intelligence is.Theoxforddictionaries.com defines Intelligence as - “The ability to acquire and applyknowledge and skills” Machines, as were manufactured by humans were never‘intellgent’ by design, which means that they did not have capability to ‘acquire’knowledge or skills. Programs and softwares, as we know, are teachable, this meanswe need to teach a software what to do and feed it with information to help it function.There are programs which can look up information for sure, but even in such cases, weneed to tell it where to look for the information. Though people of all civilization forcenturies have imagined the overpowering of machine over man (imagine the cult sci-fiHollywood blockbusters), the scientific community did not have much reason to beoptimistically inclined. Then something happened in the year 1956 which changed theway we look at AI. Alan Turing, the renowned mathematician, was a proponent of the Theory ofComputation. In this theory, he suggested that just by using two simple symbols - 0 and1, a machine (computer) can achieve any feat of mathematical deduction. This inspireda group of computer mavericks to take up exploratory work targeted at developing anelectronic brain. This kind of work was away from the limelight and usuallyconsidered shady and not many computer experts showed any interest in it. Then in theyear 1956, a group of eminent scientists and thinkers, like Claudde Shannon, NathanRichester of IBM, Ray Solomonoff and Arthur Samuel, amongst others, attended theDartmouth Conference to discuss the inception of AI research. They agreed thatintelligent computers, capable of assessing a set of data and taking decisions dependingon those data, can be created. Over the next two decades, they came up with interestingchanges in programming. Suddenly, computers thought to be dumb and operating oncomparative logic, started achieving astonishing feats that requires conscious thinkingand intelligence. These programs were solving algebra problems, geometrical problemsand were learning to ‘speak’ This excited governments and investors and the AIresearch saw capital influx worth millions of dollars. With leaps and bounds, computersstarted to learn how to ‘think’

Over the next couple of decades, computers (read programs) became increasinglysmarter. There were programs which could play chess, paint a picture, project modelsbased on statistics and even have conversations with humans and respond to them.

But were they really becoming intelligent?

After the initial awe of an inanimate object running on electricity performing ‘thinking’tasks faded, people started questioning whether the computer was indeed ‘learning’ andbecoming intelligent or whether it was just ‘imitating’ things and just ‘pretending’ tobe intelligent. People argued that a talking parrot greeting you with - “Good morning sir,have a nice day” is not intelligent, as it has no idea of what those words mean, eitherindividually or when clubbed in a meaningful sentence. This idea gave rise to theChinese Room Experiment, a thought experiment that tried to invalidate the concept ofAI.

The Chinese Room Thought Experiment

Leading AI researchers believed that proper programming can induce a ‘mind’ in acomputer, can enable it to think and learn as humans do. This theory was confronted

by John Searle in his famous Chinese Room Thought Experiment. In brief, thesummary of the experiment is as -

Suppose an Englishman named John, who has no knowledge of Chinese language

whatsoever, is locked in a room in China. He can only communicate with his captorsby writing on a piece of paper slid from under the door. Let us assume John has a setof rules written in English which relates one set of Chinese Character with another.

So when his captors slid through a paper with Chinese writing, he compares thissheet with his set of rules and just replaces each character with the correspondingChinese character as written in his rule book. His captors on the other side of the

door will think John knows the Chinese language, when in fact, he has no idea whathe is communicating about.

Clearly, scientist needed an uniform and unambiguous test, that will be used to verifywhether or not an AI has reached human level intelligence. One of the most populartests that came up as the Holy Grail for AI validation is the Turing Test, proposed bythe famous scientist Alan Turing, in his paper Computing Machinery and Intelligencein the year 1950. The outline of the test describes that a human will be used as a test,who will be communicating via chat (writing medium only) with two participants in tworooms. The catch is that one of the participants will be an AI. The man having thiscommunication will have no way of knowing which is which. If the man fails to identifythe computer as a computer, then the AI would have passed the test. Interesting as it may sound, what is even more interesting is that programs have alreadypassed the Turing Test. A program called ELIZA, designed by programmer JosephWeizenbaum in the year 1966 is one of the first programs to have successfully passedthe Turing Test. Another program called PARRY designed by Kenneth Colby in the year1972 also passed the Turing Test, with participants able to tell that it is a machine andnot a man, only 48% of the time, a figure which is consistent with random guessing. If this piece of information awes you, prepare to be surprised even more. Chances are,you too have already been fooled by a program into a conversation, believing that youare chatting with an actual person. There are lots of chatterbots doing the rounds in theinternet, which presents itself as a person seeking relationship, and chats with anotherperson online to lure them to divulge their personal data.

What? Is AI already a reality? Are we living it?OMG!

Yes, indeed its an OMG moment! We are living with AI for long and it is affecting moreareas of our life than we can even acknowledge. But before you panic, let me assure you- we are in friendly company, for now. Before discussing the host of AI already existentin common marketplace and in our daily lives, let me clear out something which willhelp you understand why we are not yet doomed, but may be heading towards it. The 3 Calibers of AI Most of us, when we hear about AI, we think of a monster thousand times smarter than

us, with superhuman capabilities and with a vengeful attitude. Well, we are somewhatcorrect, thanks Hollywood. What we miss, is this - AI is a broad field and it isseparated in three levels called calibers, each level leading to the subsequent one andeach level subsequent level exponentially more complex than its preceding level. The 3calibers of AI are as -

Artificial Narrow Intelligence or ANI: ANI or Artificial Narrow Intelligence isthe capability of a computer or program to showcase intelligent behaviour in onefunctional area only. Consider it to be like a prodigy child - a child whosurpasses normal human intelligence level for a particular display of talent (ex -painting, mathematics, etc) but is usually not so smart in the other cognitiveareas (like chemistry, literature, social skills, etc) The difference between ahuman prodigy and a computer ANI is that the later doesn’t has even rudimentaryintelligence in fields which do not fall in its domain. We have long sinceachieved exceptional feats in ANI and have kind of exhausted its applicableareas. We are now moving slowly but steadily to the second caliber of AI, whichis –

Artificial General Intelligence: This is the dauntingly difficult part to achievebut many scientist believe we are on the threshold of creating an AGI. AGI orArtificial General Intelligence is a when a machine has an Intelligence level atpar with a human. The reason this is called general intelligence is because such aprogram will be aware of all facets and will be intelligent in more than one field.AGI doesn’t sound dangerous, no, not unless you realize that a computeroperating at an AGI level will have all the craftiness of a human mind, viz -power of reasoning, abstract thinking, analysis and problem solving. Alsoremember that an AGI will work at a much faster DPR (data processing rate)than a normal human being. It can continuously improve its own source code tomake itself better and better, and this is where it gets scarier, for when an AGIbecomes more intelligent and crosses the threshold of the most intelligent human,it enters into the realm of –

Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI): ASI is defined as that level of intelligencewhich surpasses human intelligence level in all fields, ranging from creativity,problem solving skills and social skills. It can range from intelligence level justslightly higher than that of the most intelligent human to zillions of time moreintelligent. That would make ASI brain compared to our brain as ours iscompared to the brain of ants. What will happen when ASI is achieved? Howsoon are we going to achieve it? We will take up these questions in our narrative.

Where are we now in the quest for AI?

So far, we have only been able to achieve ANI. We are still smarter than the intelligentcomputers, but that gap is bridging fast. ANI has encompassed a wide spectrum of ourlives. Some of the areas where we use AI or are kind of dependent on it are -

Cars: What makes your car’s anti-lock brakes to kick in at the right time? Or theair pillows to eject if your car hits on something at a considerable momentum?

Google: Isn’t it creepy the way google reads our minds and always finds resultsmore suited to what we are looking for? Results displayed for two peoplesearching the web with the same keyword - restaurant from two different partsof the world will not probably be the same.

Retargeting: This is when you browse a product in an ecommerce site and theproduct suddenly starts showing up across ad spaces in different sites that wevisit.

Friend suggestions: Facebook keeps suggesting people who may be our friends.LinkedIn suggests people we may know and may wish to connect to. Strangelyenough, most of the suggestions turn out to be people we actually know.

Virtual games: Whether it is the simple chess or tic-tac-toe game that you playor the more sophisticated games in the playstation, these programs are designedto think along with you and strategize it’s next move accordingly.

Smart Phone: Most interestingly, the smartphone in your hand with the array of

different applications, some to help you wake up, some to count the calories youburn, some to catch up with your friends, some to help you navigate the road, is afactory of ANI.

All these programs as discussed in the example above and countless others just likethem, are classic examples of ANI - an intelligent piece of program targeted at onespecific task only. For instance, ask the navigator app how to travel from point A to B,and it will find out all possible paths you can take to reach your destination. Ask thesame app however to check the spellings in your essay and it will not even comprehendthe meaning of your request.

Wow, AI sounds cool not scary. I really like myapps!

ANI is not scary - I would agree to that. Mostly, it is cute. A buggy or malfunctioningANI can at most cause an isolated disaster (the plane or the stock crashes) But everysmall step taken to improve an ANI is actually another step less in the journey towardsAGI. The details of ANI and its steady course may not cause many scientists to losetheir sleep, but there is a group of thinkers who are not as comfortable. To quote AaronSaenz, ANI systems “are like the amino acids in the early Earth’s primordial ooze”What seems harmless and docile may someday wake up into something we won’t beable to recognize!

From ANI to AGI

Though we have crafted programs that are superbly intelligent at some areas, evensurpassing human intelligence and cognitive powers, we have not yet been able to makea computer which is even as intelligent as the ‘stupidest’ human alive. Though ASI seemto be the penultimate goal for AI enthusiasts, but most AI experts believe that it isactually achieving AGI which is the real challenge. Why is achieving general intelligence so incredibly difficult? To understand this, weneed to understand the basic difference in which a computer operates and how our brain

does. A computer works with distinguishable pieces of data. It performs operationsfaster than we can even process the information. But the human mind can drawinferences and make decisions which may not necessarily be logical (you decide tojump out of a flying plane with a parachute bag on your back at an altitude of 3000feet or higher (sky diving). The computer will reeve its brains...sorry, circuits out,figuring out why you chose to do it) A program can calculate the n-th root of a complexnumber to mind boggling precision, but show it a movie and ask it whether it liked it,and it becomes dumb. These are only peripheral examples of the difference in acomputer brain and a human brain. From here, it gets even more complex. Let us take theexample of the ANI incorporated in your smart camera which takes a snap wheneversomeone smiles at the lense (or it detects a smiling face) Pretty impressive. Now say ahideous person is smiling at you. Something tells you his intentions are not right and hemay con or harm you. In effect, the smiling man is not actually smiling. It’s easy for youto tell the difference, but a computer, at this level, won’t be able to do so. Consideranother scenario - you have 7 bucks and you want to buy something worth 8 bucks. Thecomputer will decide immediately that you cannot buy for 7 what is to be sold at 8. Butyou, endowed with human intelligence, will try to bargain with the seller and try toconvince him to sell the product at a discounted price of 7 bucks. This is something thatwill never occur to a machine level intelligence (MI)

So how do we get from ANI to AGI?

To move from ANI to the AGI, two things need to happen -

1. We need more computational power for the computer: More computationalpower, in terms of increased hardware to match the level at which the braincomputes, is one of the first steps needed to move towards AGI. The human braincomputes at an average rate of 1016 CPS or 10 quadrillion CPS. (CPS isCalculations per second) This is a huge demand and a lot of hardware andelectrical power is required to fuel that amount of computational power. Is itachievable? China’s supercomputer named Tianhe-2 has already beaten thatnumber, currently operating at a rate of 34 quadrillion CPS. But it comes with itsset of limitations. The computer takes up 720 square meters of space, consumes24 MW of power and costing an estimated $390 million to build. At thosefigures, it's still needs some time to make such computational power readilyavailable for labs across the world to continue research on the transition fromANI to AGI. To make AGI a possibility, we have to see how much raw

computational power we can avail for $1000 (a ballpark figure for something tohave marketable value) Currently, the computers which are available for $1000are operating at one-thousandth of the human intelligence level. This doesn’tseem like any feat, not unless you consider that computational power availablefor $1000 was operating at a trillionth of the human intelligence level in the year1985 and escalated to only a billionth of the human intelligence level by 1995and a millionth by 2005 and is currently at only a thousandth. If it follows thesame rate of growth, by the year 2025 we will be able to produce enoughcomputational power in $1000 to compete with the human intelligence.

2. Making the computer smarter: We have seen that the hardware necessary

for making AGI is already available. Now comes the difficult part - to makethe computer smarter, at par with a normal human intelligence level. Thereare different ideas prevalent on how to make the computer smart at thehuman level. Various scientist are trying out various techniques and all thatwe know is that one day, one of these will just work out. Of the varioustypes of mainstream principles to make the computer smart, some of themost interesting are these –

1. Copy the brain: That’s like a ‘duh!’ Of course if you are trying to

emulate a natural phenomenon in the mechanical world, you need toreplicate it and its action. But the problem with emulating nature isthat more often than not, the models that work for nature do notwork in the mechanical realm. For instance, the flight of birds mighthave inspired men to fly, but inventing a device that could flap wingswouldn’t have worked all that well (though this is exactly how theystarted off with the plane, but anyways) When it comes to creating anartificial model that could emulate a natural phenomenon, we need tothink from the model’s mechanical perspective, not from theperspective of the natural phenomenon. Thus rather than copying thebrain verbatim, scientists and machine-programmers are usingcomputational circuitry to create virtual neural paths. When theprogram is asked to execute a task or answer a question, a currentgets fired in one direction through a mesh of transistors (thecomputer’s equivalent for neuron) If we confirm the action to be validor the answer to be correct, the pathways through which the responsewas fired gets strengthened. If however we mark the action as invalid

or the answer as incorrect, the pathway weakens. Repetitivelyexecuting this process gradually makes the computer smarter. But notall programmers share the same level of patience. They believe thereis a faster and much more effective way of mapping the brain to acomputer program. This will be achieved by a technique called WholeBrain Emulation, where a human brain will be sliced up in very thinlayers and then these layers will be scanned and all the scans will bejuxtaposed to form a 3D model of the human brain. Once this isachieved, all that is needed to be done is to superimpose this humanmind model on a receptive piece of software and Bingo! We have ourfirst AGI! If this sounds too science-fictionish and not-so achievable,remember that scientists have already achieved whole brainemulation of a 1 mm long flatworm brain. Given the exponential rateat which science progresses, we will soon have news of Whole BrainEmulation of an ant, and then a rat, and then a rabbit and beforelong, we will have the brain of David (fictional name) superimposed onan AI.

2. Computational Evolution: Another popular theory aiming at

development of AGI provides the concept of ComputationalEvolution. Its kind of evolution, but for the computers. We know oneof the benefits of evolution is that it produces better and smarterspecies. So these group of scientist wonder why to take the entiretrouble to emulate the brain when we can get evolution do this for us.The concept they wish to employ is called Genetic Algorithm. A groupof programs with a certain level of intelligence will be given tocomplete a certain task. The ones who completes the task best will bethen be made to breed with each other. This means that half of theprogram from one of the successful software will be combined withanother half of the program from the other successful software. Thisprocess will be repeated continuously for several iterations and witheach iteration, the intelligence level of the computer will keep onincreasing.

3. Self help is the best help: Though the most daunting, yet this is alsothe most promising method to reach AGI levels. The idea is to write aprogram with two main objectives - i) Do research on AI, and ii) keep

improving its source code to get better and better.

Okay, so when is all this going to happen?

As we have discussed, we already have hardware that can support AGI. From thesoftware perspective, we have already achieved ANI and are moving towards the nextmilestone - AGI. We have already done a Whole Brain Emulation of a worm and aretrying to emulate brains of other smaller species. If we successfully design a self-rewritable program, we may achieve AGI level in the next couple of years. Theprogram may take some time to bring itself to cat level intelligence. Then it will takelesser time to become monkey level intelligent. It will take even lesser time to becomeape level intelligent. In the next few months, it can become as intelligent as a dumbhuman. And then, may be in the next couple of hours, it will achieve AGI. But the question is, once a program achieves Human Level Intelligence, what then?AGI is definitely a milestone for us, but it will be of little value to the program. Once onreaching human level intelligence, it will obviously try to spread it’s tentacles tobecome more and more intelligent. With its resources, it will keep on increasing itslevel of intelligence, which at this point has already crossed that of the smartest human.And then, while exponentially increasing its intelligence, what will happen next is this -

INTELLIGENCE EXPLOSION!!

Once the self-reprogrammable AI keeps on improving itself recursively, it will surpassall intelligence levels known to man and will reach a level of intelligence we canneither imagine nor comprehend. This is called an Intelligence Explosion. And whenthis happens, we have no idea what will happen. Will the AI, with its Godlikeintelligence, be faithful to its creator? Or will it see mankind as an unnecessary tantrumand decide to do away with our race? Will it help solve problems like energy crisis,poverty, global warming, etc, that seem so daunting to us? Or will it rather createproblems at so great a magnitude that we face the most dreaded outcome of all -Existential Risk!

What happens when ASI is here?

A million dollar question actually! It is basically impossible to presume what willhappen when an ASI finally comes into existence. The reason we can not fathom theoutcomes is because we can not think at the level of an ASI to smart-guess what it willdo when it will be here. Amongst all thinkers of the AI community, you will find peoplewho range from the very optimistic to the very pessimistic. On one hand we have thebelievers who believe that the inception of an ASI will solve many of life’s problemsand that it will be like having God on our side. There are also the skeptics who believethat an ASI would be the cause for total annihilation of the human race. And of coursethere are people who fall in between these two extremes and are kind of rightful in theirthinking that it may be a bit of both. However, Oxford philosopher and AI thinker NickBostrom believes that all the possible outcomes can be summarized into either of thefollowing two situations –

1. We achieve immortality: Bostrom believes that one of the possible impactsof an ASI maybe attainment of human immortality. The ASI will assist us infinding answers to questions that have always baffled us and thereby eludefactors which lead us to death. We may find a way to achieve infinite life,though not necessarily in the biological form.

2. We become extinct: One thing that we know from the history of the earth is

that species do become extinct. It is like death, but at the species level. Sofar, we haven’t seen any specie which was capable of eluding extinction. Sothis is a fate which inevitably waits for us, ASI or no ASI. But the advent ofan ASI may expedite the process and bring forward the date of humanextinction closer by millions of years.

I am not too keen on becoming immortal, but I amscared as shit to become extinct. Let’s scrap the

project!

If your thoughts are in line with this sentiment, I will not call you a sceptic or a luddite.So long science and technology makes our lives easier and fun (ANI does just that) we

are okay with it. Heck we are even okay with its marginal side effects at replacing someof our jobs. But something that poses an Existential Threat? Nah, not interested! But it doesn't actually matter whether you or I are interested or not. History is evidentthat a scientific progress of any scale can never be subdued, whether by individual orpolitical resistance. It is not about the doggedness of humans, but rather the way naturebehaves. Even if governments regulate or put a ban to AI research, there will still bemen and women around the world who will find motivation and means to pursue it,some, for the sake of science, some to play God. Whatever the case maybe, if ASI is atall possible, we know that it will be created, there is no other way to it. Since we can never actually restrict the advent of an intelligence of caliber 3, what wecan do however is ask a few fundamental questions to understand what to expect whenour guest is finally here. One of the first primary question we need to ask is –

How long for MLI to reach the level of an ASI?

Scientists like Ben Goertzel, Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy and futurist RayKurzweil, believe that the growth trajectory is exponential in nature. The interestingcase with exponential growth is that the rate of growth may seem exceptionally slow oraverage during the beginning of the graph, but the rate increases astonishingly at only alittle distance apart. This means that even though the advent of ANI may not seem thatcrazy an achievement, we may actually be only a few decades away from ArtificialSuperintelligence. This means ASI can be a reality within our generation and we may aswell be the last generation to witness the great dip of humanity to Extinction or thegreat rise to Immortality. Some other eminent thinkers like Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and researchpsychologist Gary Marcus think that the estimate of achieving ASI level in the next fewdecades is highly unjustified. They argue that thinker like Kurzweil are underestimatingthe sheer magnitude of the challenge. ASI, they believe, even though possible to achieve,may not actually be a reality in our lifetime.

The former group however has a point in case that puts the favor of the argument ontheir side. They bring to attention the year of 1985 when internet was slowly catching upand people believed that though it may one day go on to be very impactful, such a thingwill not happen in the near future. We all know how incorrect that assumption was wheninternet was a global phenomenon within the next decade. The later group, one which is led by Paul Allen and Gary Marcus, reply with the logicthat as the intelligence level grows, so will grow the challenges associated withachieving the next level. Typical exponential growth rate will not apply here. As of now, we are only speculating. We have no way of knowing when exactly willapocalypse start. Perhaps the Mayans could have told, but they are long past. A thirdgroup of thinkers, quite like agnostics, believe that both the groups can be right. Theybelieve that given the unpredictable way in which intelligence explosion behaves, anASI level of intelligence can as well be achieved in the next couple of decades or it mayeven take several more years. A fourth group believe that there isn’t a timeline prediction for achieving ASI as we canactually never reach that level. To put things in perspective, in the year 2013, Vincent C. Müller and Nick Bostromconducted a survey that asked hundreds of AI experts the following questions - “For thepurposes of this question, assume that human scientific activity continues without majornegative disruption. By what year would you see a (10% / 50% / 90%) probability forsuch HLMI (High Level Machine Language) to exist?” In brief, the question asked thescientists, that presuming progress is made at the current rate, by which year do theythink that there is a 10% chance of achieving an AGI, by which year there is a 50%chance of achieving an AGI and by which years there is a 90% chance of achieving anAGI. The data, when consolidated, looked like this - 10% likelihood of achieving AGI by the year: 202250% likelihood of achieving AGI by the year: 204090% likelihood of achieving AGI by the year: 2075 This means that a group of experts of AI think that Human Level of MachineIntelligence or AGI can be achieved in another seven years. Even if we take worst casescenario, still most scientist believe AGI will be achieved well before the end of thiscentury.

But mind you it is not AGI which will have life-altering implications, the toast ofImmortality or Extinction will be brought along with ASI and not AGI (though the laterwill be a precursor of the former) So what should concern us even more is when willASI be a reality? The same survey which was conducted by Müller and Bostrom alsoasked the participants how likely they thought that ASI could be achieved once AGI hasbeen achieved. 10% of the participating scientists thought that the transition from AGI toASI would be achieved within 10 years of achieving AGI levels. 75% participantsthought the transition would happen within 30 years. Let us assume that the median year for us to get to ASI once AGI has been achieved is 20years ((10 + 30)/2) As we have already seen in the previous result, 50% scientistsagreed that AGI could be achieved by 2040. Adding the median of 20 years to this, wecan presume that ASI will be a reality by the year 2060. That’s sooner than the maturitydates of some of your insurances!

Now that we know ASI can be a reality well withinour lifetime, we must ask the next important

question - “What will happen when ASI is here?”

It pays to be prepared! Well, though I am not sure whether or not we can actuallyprepare for an artificially intelligent entity which is smarter than us, faster than us, haslimitless access and power over all forms on earth. To prepare at least to accept theconsequences, we can only fathom what surprises ASI will bring to the table. Let usdiscuss some of these possibilities and the implications these will have on our life.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of times smarter than us: Remember when amaths problem would bog you for hours and then when your teacher would solveit in seconds and be like - Duh! you would think he is the smartest person alive.In reality, we would be only fractionally smarter than you. Yet he did with easywhat seemed daunting to you. With the advent of ASI, our relation with it will belike that of the kid-you and your smart teacher. Only that in this case, the teacherwill be way much smarter. So it will solve problems which may seem unsolvableto us, in a manner as if it’s too petty something to even bother. For instance, weare bothered about poverty. The ASI can take up any piece of garbage and realignthe molecular composition to transform it to food - fruits, meat, whatever. It canalso solve the problem of energy crisis by producing fossil fuel from anything

that we can spare. Or maybe we will not need cars at all - ASI will devise waysto teleport us from one place to another. And though such things, in the presentcontext of discussion seem crazy ideas straight out of a science fiction, the ASIwill accomplish such feats as you would pick a pencil from the floor.

Colonizing the universe: There is one thing we can predict quite confidentlyabout the ASI - it will soon realize that the earth has limited resource and the sunisn't getting any younger. It will realize what we already have - that we areheading towards the end! Even though we have realized this years ago, there isnot much we have been able to achieve in terms of averting this fate, apart fromspeculating and postulating some theories. But the ASI will not have the limitationof intelligence that we have. No sooner it realizes that the earth will exhaust itsresources soon and the sun will soon be a white dwarf (this is what a startbecomes when it dies!) it will start preparing for ways to expand out of the earthand solar system and start colonizing other places in the universe. Judging by theInformation Explosion that it will have, we can safely presume that space-timetravel will not be a deterrent for it. Once it starts colonizing the universe, may beit will allow us to travel to those parts and settle; thereby nullifying the fear ofperishing with the earth once the sun grows too old.

Make humans immortal: Humans have always had a fascination for eternal life.It’s nothing to blame of actually - I don’t think dying is fun. Also when you die,you leave things behind. You can no longer enjoy the company of your friendsand family, enjoy the food you liked, enjoy your vacations, the money you have,the property you assimilated. For ages, humans have searched for an elixir thatwould give them the secret to eternal living - for ages and eons. But is thispossible? Let us look at it this way - when life originated, nature had to find away to help it continue. And life could continue in either of two ways - a) eternallife (or immortality) or b) reproduction. Of these two options, the second onewas by far superior and made a of sense to evolution. So it becomes evident thatnature choose death for us. So now let us ask - what determines our life span?From an evolutionary point of view, the lifespan of a creature depends on the lifecycle - birth - grow strong and reach reproductive age - reproduce and makeoffsprings - fend for and provide for the offsprings till they grow young andcapable enough to take care of themselves. Once this cycle is complete, naturedoesn’t see any reason why we should continue living. So we have accepted thefact that death is inevitable and this is how nature wanted it. But the eminentphysicist Richard Feynman disagreed. He said -

It is one of the most remarkable things that in all of the biological sciences there is

no clue as to the necessity of death. If you say we want to make perpetual motion, wehave discovered enough laws as we studied physics to see that it is either absolutelyimpossible or else the laws are wrong. But there is nothing in biology yet found thatindicates the inevitability of death. This suggests to me that it is not at all inevitable

and that it is only a matter of time before the biologists discover what it is that iscausing us the trouble and that this terrible universal disease or temporariness of the

human’s body will be cured. Let us now look at death this way - why do we die? Not because Mother Nature sendsthe reaper with a slip that our time is up! No, we die because we age. And what doesaging do to our body? It makes it weaker and more feeble. This is the same thing withyour car. Inanimate things die too! As you continue using your car, it loses its initialperformance. Over many years, it becomes rusty, takes up more time to start and keepssurprising you from time to time. Now consider what would happen if you replace theparts of the car as soon as it goes a little out of the way. Technically speaking, your carwould continue running for ever. The same is with humans, or any animal for that matter.The reason we die is because our organs wear off, our cells become less effective indoing what they are supposed to do. Add with that comes diseases and we have all thereason for the body to stop working one fine day. But with the advent of ASI, this willbe a thing of the past. ASI will help us replace damaged or worn out body partsimmediately with new synthetically produced tissues. In case of any disease, nanobots,controlled by the ASI will roam about our bloodstream, targeting the damaged cells oraffected cells and removing them and replacing them with fresh new cells. If thishappens, then we would virtually become immortals! Either that, or the ASI will find another ingenuine way to make us immortal. It will finda way to download our consciousness into a system and then we will be the system! Soas man made God, so will the creation create the creator! But can our consciousness,imprinted on an algorithm, be considered as living? Trapped inside a circuit, feeding onelectrical signals, without mobility, without the sensation of touch and feel? Will thatbe us? Let me cite an example. A man, in an unfortunate, near fatal accident, damages acritical part of his brain, thereby rendering his entire body paralysed. The man canspeak and has memory, but he cannot move his body or his limbs. Will he be the sameman as the one before the accident? Biologically speaking - yes, he will be. He mighthave broken down emotionally, there may be psychological changes between the pre-accident him and the post-accident him. But it will still be him. Same person, sameconsciousness. So to our question as to whether we will be the same us if ourconsciousness is downloaded to a system rather than confined in a body, the answer isyes, we will be. Of course it will be weird. But then, change always is. The man whowas suave with his big rule book accounting job must have felt weird when he was

asked to use an Excel sheet. But then he warmed up to it. And now we use it as if this isthe way it has always been. It will probably be the same case with us and the system.But then, we may not necessarily need to be confirmed in a circuit, our consciousnessstored in some digital memory units. May be the ASI will provide a human-casing forus, a body of our liking, prepared from cultured tissues, and then download ourconsciousness into that artificial body. It will be totally like the body we have now,with the same level of dexterity and sense organs. We may as well enjoy food and sexand exercise, only that all of it will be superficial and we could change our body to anew body just as we change cars now.

This doesn’t sound that bad. That way I see it,ASI can actually be a good child

It is too early to decide whether ASI will indeed prove to be our greatest invention orour biggest nightmare. So far, we have only discussed about the positive impacts an ASIcan bring to us. But in such a discussion, we are assuming that the ASI will share ourvalues and priorities. For one of the biggest problems with an increased intelligence isthat - It may see as a necessary step what we may see as a problem: There is no doubtabout the fact that once the computer has achieved ASI level, it will use it’s resources toconstantly try and make itself smarter and better. The thing with intelligence is thatpeople with different levels of intelligence see things differently. What you see as aproblem, a person who is smarter than you may not. For instance, a child may screamand shriek at the sight of a injection meant to vaccinate him against a disease. He mayperceive the situation as a serious problem and may try to do everything possible toavert it. But a person older than him, his parents or guardians maybe, will not see thesame situation as a problem but merely as an action, albeit, a painful one, which must betaken to avert a much bigger problem in future. The ASI, with its exponentially highintelligence, will be able to see things that we can’t, perceive things way differentlythan we would. Things that we will see as threats or problems, will be seen asnecessary steps that must be executed to achieve a bigger goal. Again, as the ASI willkeep improving itself and continue growing smarter and smarter, what it perceived as aprogressive step an hour back, it may see as a problem that will need be removed justan hour later, by which time it has grown maybe a million times smarter than it was theprevious hour, and with this renewed intelligence level, it started seeing and judging

things differently again. The point is that, we will be operating from a point ofexcessively low and relatively stagnant intelligence level (as compared to the ASI) andhence we will never be able to understand the motive of any of its actions. It will not beanything like a race between the hare and the tortoise. It will be a race between acheetah and a tortoise, with the tortoise running in the opposite direction! Humans don’t fit into its equation: The problem is, even though we have accepted thefact that ASI, when they arrive, will be nothing like humans, even so, we try to predictits behaviour in terms of the same anthropomorphological sense that we use todescribe and predict god. We use human attributes to define something which will so-not-be humans. When ASI arrives, its primary target will be two folds - keep onincreasing its intelligence and trying to colonize the universe. In its quest, it may notfind humans to be a worthy companion. It may even not find human presence to beproductive, conducive to the achievement of its overall goals. This does not mean itwill be the husky voiced monster running rampage on the entire world, especially NorthAmerica, in a quest to vanquish the human race and prove it’s superiority andsovereignty. If an ASI decides to turn against humans, it will do so simply, as anecessary measure, with no hard feelings whatsoever. Scary and demonic as it maysound from our perspective, from the ASI’s point of view, this will be totally normal.Consider for example the case where a human goes to inhabit a new resident and thereare too many rodents in the place. What will he do? Will he try to establish a code ofmutual existence, in a way that will allow both to live happily? Will he offer the rodentssome crumbs of bread and a saucer of milk everyday, in exchange that they do not bitethe kids or scatter hither and thither and spread disease? Probably not. What the humanwill do is arrange for a way to terminate the rodents. Now consider this from therodent’s point - it has no intention to make life miserable for the humans; heck, it is waytoo small and way too dumb to even consider something like that. Does it deserve to bekilled for apparently no reason? Of course not. But when we see it from the human’spoint of view, the merciless killing of the many rodents do not seem that illogical or outof place. He doesn’t commit the act out of an emotion of rage, but just because in thescheme of things, he doesn’t find a pace for the rodents. With the advent of the ASI, wemay as well be like those rodents, ones which are pretty harmless, but which will beseen as useless by our own creation! When it comes to ASI and its discussion, different people tend to look at it differently.While some are confident that ASI will be the greatest boon of technology to mankind,some others think that ASI will be the cause for our extinction. Some others still believethat since ASI will operate at an intelligence level which we can not even imagine, so itis futile to try to predict how it will behave once it is here. Different at thoughts as theymay be regarding the implication of an ASI, what all these people unequivocally agree

to is that an ASI will have insurmountable power at its disposal. And it will use thispower to do whatever it will want to do - there will be no stopping it. That beingsuccinctly clear, we must now move on to our next question -

What will motivate its actions?

It is the answer to this question that will allow us to at least try to attempt guessing whatto expect when our penultimate goal of creating a God is fulfilled. An ASI’s goal will betwofold - a) It will want to become more and more intelligent, and b) It will try tocolonize different parts of the universe. Before discussing these goals in detail, let mecorroborate that not many AI enthusiasts would agree with me on this. Most of themthink that an AI’s motivation or goal would be whatever its programmer programs itsgoal to be. For instance, the goal of your calculator app is to provide you the correctmathematical results for your computations. The goal of your internet browser is to sendand receive requests from server and encode and decode the data to something you willunderstand. These programs, meant to carry out one specific task, will keep on carryingout this particular task for eons. The thinkers argue such will be the case with an ASI.Trying to conjecture whether it will be friendly or unfriendly will be assigninganthropomorphological characteristics to it. An ASI will be inherently a computer,deploying its new found intelligence and resources to single mindedly perfect the onetask which it has been assigned to do. I, however disagree. For you see, in this inferenceof the ASI’s behaviour, what we miss is the assumption that we have already consideredwhile discussing the course in which the present day ANI can transform into the ASI.You will remember that one of the ways discussed to reach ASI was to prepare aprogram which can thereby program itself. If such is the case, then the ASI will keepchanging its goal continuously and also revise its modus operandi to achieve suchgoals. Which brings us to the question - What will motivate an ASI to do whatever it is that itwill do? We humans need motivation to take any action, simple or complex. We do notneed any motivation to not do something. Aspiration, glory, self-actualization andsometimes negative emotions like fear, anger, jealousy, etc, motivate us to take majoraction steps. That is the way we are wired, the way we behave. A program, however,will most likely not need a motivational perk to get it to do something. Its actions willbe based on logic rather than emotions, and it will do things simply because it needs bedone. For example, let us assume an ASI starts bioengineering human tissues and helpsman achieve a prolonged life span (even if not immortality, not right away) then it will

do so, not from a feeling of gratitude towards its creators, but just because humans witha larger time span without too much fuss on unnecessary events like birth and deathmakes more sense! Similarly, if it makes a couple of tweaks and life goes Kaboom, itwill not be driven by hatred or a fear of competition, but rather maybe it will think at itscurrent level of intelligence, that life forms are just a burden on the planet and will ormay somehow cause a detour, if not a roadblock, to its (ASI’s) long term goals. To understand the motivation of an ASI further, we will need to look into the concept ofconsciousness. The reason why we must bother so much about it is because themotivation of the ASI will be the ultimate deciding factor to prove whether it will be acurse or a boon. Let us look now into the subject of consciousness from an analyticalpoint of view and try and understand how far we have traversed in our attempt toartificially simulate consciousness and induce it in a program and more importantly,where are we heading.

Can machines be conscious?

On the 4th of October 2011, iPhone 4S introduced to its users an inbuilt applicationcalled SIRI. Siri was pitched as your Personal Intelligent Assistant. This meant Siriwould talk to you, communicate with you, find places for you, identify your friends andfamily from your phone book, predict the weather for you, learn to pronounce your nameproperly, set up an alarm or remind you of meetings or anniversaries and do a hell lot ofother things that you would depend on a human assistant to do. There was a minordifference though - Siri was way smarter and faster and much more efficient than itshuman counterpart. And Siri was an adaptive piece of software. What this means is thatSiri would learn things about you, your preferences, your likings, your pronunciationand as you keep using Siri, the more efficient it gets in doing tasks for you. It also meansthat the Siri in your phone will be different than the Siri in my phone. Its as if both ofthem will be different personalities altogether. Siri is a typical example of Artificial Intelligence.. Now consider Siri gets smarter,almost to the level of human intelligence. Imagine how things will work then. Siri willwatch movies with you, discuss about your relationship woes, give financial wisdom,laugh with you at jokes and sympathize with you at hard times. It will become so muchof a flawless friend, that you will lose contact with almost all your friends for anyemotional needs. Whenever you feel like talking to someone, you can pick out yourphone and just talk to Siri. There may also be different modes in which you can use Siri

to communicate with you and run errands for you - the buddy mode, the guru mode, thegirlfriend or boyfriend mode, the fan mode, the dumb mode, etc. Just by selectingwhich mode you want to communicate in, you can talk about serious matters with Siri,or talk romantic, dirty, spiritual or just engage in casual banter. The point is, Siri willbe so much like a human, that it will pass the Turing Test any given day and you willhave a hard time considering the idea that Siri is just a bunch of codes, without emotionand who doesn’t care a heck about you. If someone then presses you to stop using Siri,or let's say the AI R&D reaches such a critical level that governments identify apotential risk in the pursuit of an ASI, and ban all AI products from the market, includingSiri, you will believe that Siri is your friend (may be she will convince you to believeit) and that whatever the research may suggest, it is actually conscious! Now thequestion is - will you be right in assuming that Siri is conscious? Or will it in fact justbe a very good mimicking program, with no knowledge whatsoever of whatever it issaying? When discussing about the concept of Artificial Consciousness, AI thinkers usually findthem divided into two broad categories - the ones who think that with increased level ofintelligence, a computer can actually attain consciousness; and some others, who thinkno matter how categorically intelligent a computer becomes, it will never ever beconscious. The reason for this divergence is because consciousness is a fleeting subjectto understand. Neurobiologists and clinical psychologists are still trying to figure outwhat consciousness actually is and what it constitutes of. So far, we have not been ableto figure out much. Now let’s say an AI, however intelligent it may go on to become, lacks consciousness,then it will be like a Genie in a bottle - who himself may be the owner of superhumancapabilities, but doesn’t know what to do with it, nor has any desire to know so. Theonly thing is will be good at, with all that power and intelligence, will be to followorders (though that too may have catastrophic outcomes, for a different reasonthough: think terrorism) If that is the case, than the advent of ASI will be one of thegreatest boon for all of humankind. However, things may not necessarily be all that great just because an ASI fails to attainconsciousness in the way we understand it. To understand this, let us take the case ofFriendly AI and Unfriendly AI. When it comes to AIs, friendly and unfriendly are notgeneric terms in the way we use it. A Friendly AI will be one which will work towardsthe benefits of humans. Similarly, an Unfriendly AI will be one which will potentiallyharm humans or threaten our existence. Understand here that Unfriendly AI doesn’tnecessarily mean Evil AI. An AI will never be evil. It will just execute tasks that maycause collateral damage to humans - damages, too great for us to survive through. When

we are are talking about ASIs, we must remember that ASIs of any kind will be GoalObsessed, Amoral and have the ability to Outsmart humans. This will allow them toexecute their goals without bothering about the implications such actions will have onhuman lives, or for any such lives whatsoever. How then do we circumvent such aproblem? Simple - we give the AI friendly goals, like making people happy, keepingpeople safe or increasing human longevity. Well, not so simple actually. It is impertinent to keep in mind that programs are uniquelysingle minded. When set with a goal, they will never ponder over its consequences. Soan ASI , programmed to keep humans happy, may do so by inserting electrodes in ourbrain and stimulating the portions that generate the sensation of happiness. Asked tokeep people safe, it may lock us all in rooms for the rest of our lives. Make humans livelonger? Maybe they will place us inside a glass tube filled with some biochemicals andconnected to chargers - and so we will remain, kinda mummified, with our vitalsworking, for hundreds of years. Do you see the obnoxiously dangerous risks associated with the advent of an ASI?Shelving the project of research and development on the subject is like scatteringcolored marbles around the world and asking people not to pick up the black marbles.Sooner or later, someone will pick up a black marble and that will be it.

Our final Invention

We have travelled a long way since the beginning of this primer. Though there are aLOT of things to know about AI and all that is (quietly) going on in this field, we havecovered the basics. Before closing our discussion, here is a quick look at the mainpoints that we have discussed so far -

AI is broadly divided into 3 categories - ANI, AGI and ASIWe have already created and perfected the first level of AI, which is ANIThe hardware required for the development of AGI is already availableGoing by survey results conducted on leading AI thinkers, the median year whenAGI is supposed to arrive is 2040.The median year when ASI is predicted to arrive is 2060 (also the predicted yearfor arrival of singularity)Advent of ASI is supposed to have either of the two major causes on humanity -Immortality or Extinction

Whether an ASI will be conscious is debatableWhether or not an ASI is conscious, it may end up doing more harm than good tohuman lives, even though its intentions are good.

The first build of any software is usually buggy. We take this for granted and as testingproceeds, we identify the bugs, fix them and roll out subsequent improved versions. Butwe will not get this liberty while designing the ASI. The first ASI that we will roll outwill also possibly be the last. And as discussed, it may either have a tremendous goodeffect on us (make us immortals) or make our lives hundreds of times better, providingsolution to all our pressing problems, while taking up the responsibility for all futureresearch and developments; or it will present an apocalyptic level of existential risk,one that we will not be able to survive. Either way, the ASI will technically be the lastinvention of human being! And how will it turn out? We will just have to wait to see.

Why the change seems unbelievable? Why we donot think about it?

If I tell you, 20 years from now, there will be a stark technological sweep through, thatwill not just change the way we live our lives, communicate with each other, but will doso in such way, we will look back at our lives to the present day and think howoutrageously backdated we were! What if I tell you we will only be communicatingvirtually, with our verbal communication skills almost about extinct? What if I tell youthere will be a seamless connectivity between our brain and technology, such that wecan think and not type messages into a portal? What if medical analysis would bepossible by running a diagnostic software into our brain? What if vaccination meansinjecting specialized nanobots into our bloodstream? Too much of a fancy right? Or is it? All of this and more doesn’t sound too dauntingwhen you ponder how much your lives have changed over the last two decades? Iremember telephones were a big luxury when I was a kid and only the rich had atelephone in their house. I also remember a floppy disk used to be cool andprogramming enthusiasts tried to learn BASIC. Computers were professional devicesused in research and business facilities. A television was status symbol. All that, in the last two decade. Fast-forward to present day. My smartphone hasconfiguration better than my five year old laptop. And I do not have a desktop. Many

people don’t even have a laptop, they just use a tablet. Any by not have, I mean nothave as in - ‘Jeez I don’t need it, it's superfluous!’ and not ‘O boy, I can’t afford it’The degradation of social skills has already started. Most people are very comfortablecommunicating virtually. They are quick with words and witty. Confronted in person,they seem to flounder. They struggle with better things to say and sometimes just smileawkwardly. The communication lack is even more evident in the next generation. Theyhardly talk and laugh and smile. Lol-ing and Rofl-ing is the new way of expression.There are people who are walking around with a battery powering their heart (thepacemaker) Some other are living normal lives with an artificial prosthetic. It mayinterest you to know that artificial limbs can directly form synapses with nerve cells andcan be controlled by the brain. Today, a limb; tomorrow, the entire body! Now shake up a little. We are not reminiscing our good old days here. I am trying topoint how how your lives have changed so much than it used to be twenty years ago. Doyou find yourself pondering about it every time you use a sophisticated gadget? Whenelectronic money hit the market (debit cards, credit cards and then online transaction)people welcomed it cynically. It was not a immediate hit. Many people thought it wasunsafe and not too much fun. These days, about 85% urban people does 70% of theirfinancial transactions using virtual money forms. Do we take a deep breath beforeswiping our card at a restaurant or purchasing a product online? The same will be true twenty years from now. Though the changes that will comeholding hands with AI is something we cannot fathom right now, once it is here and westart living it, we will warm up to it in a way as if it always existed.

My take on the whole topic

This section may lose the steam. It may make you feel better, while relieving you ofsome tension. Many AI enthusiasts will differ with my personal opinions presented here.They are free to do so. After reading a lot about AIs and the how different expertsconceive the future and the fate of humanity, here is what I think they are being tooexcited about or what is more likely to happen -

Assumption 1: More intelligence will solve more problems: The entireexcitement regarding an Artificial Super Intelligence stems from the belief thatincreased intelligence is the cure for all problems. This is not necessarily alwaysright. For example, there are a lot of minor problems in our society and with our

lives which we (Humans) are intelligent enough to resolve, but don’t. If an ASI ispresented with the problem of poverty in India (considering the population ofBPL only), it will give a very easy solution to assimilate a huge wealth resourceto curb this problem. It will give a solution as this - let the urban population ofIndia, which is presently 35% of the total population, donate Re. 1 each forone day. Consider the uniqueness of the solution proposed. No one from theurban population will have any qualms about donating a rupee. With India’spopulation being roughly 12 billion, 35% will approximately amount to one-thirdof the total population, which is about 4 billion. So just by contributing one rupeefor one single day by the urban mass of India, we would have an astounding fundof 4 billion rupees to curb the poverty issues for a major chunk of the populationwhich dwells below the poverty line. What if the chunk of rural population, whoare above the poverty level, also pool in a rupee a person to this fund? About20%of the Indian population is below poverty line, so that leaves 80% of thepopulation to contribute a rupee a person to meet poverty challenges. 80% of 12billion is 9.6 billion. So that’s 9.6 billion rupees to meet poverty challenges?And just for the sake of discussion, what if the 80% people above the povertyline wake up feeling generous and donate ten rupees a person? That’s 96 billionrupees...more money to curb the poverty level of our country for ever. Do weneed a super intelligence to tell us that? No - we are smart enough to figure thatout. But we still cannot solve the problem. This proves that increased amount ofintelligence is not synonymous with problem solving - not always.

Assumption 2: An intelligent person always has the upper hand: An intelligentperson thinks in a certain way. As much as intelligence helps us see things betterand solve problems better, sometimes it also acts as a hurdle itself. Assumingthat a Superintelligent Program will be way smarter than us in all fields isincorrect in some aspects. In some instances, the increased level of intelligenceof the ASI may actually prevent it from taking certain actions, which we may takeswiftly. The great philosopher Aristotle touted this as - Learned helplessness! Itis a state when you know better to do something, when your knowledge actuallyprevented you from doing it. Consider when the Wright Brothers decided theywanted to fly a huge ship into the air, or when Marconi envisioned the concept ofwireless message transfer - the experts, so called ‘more intelligent’ peopleridiculed them. Perhaps if John Wright or Guglielmo Marconi were asintelligent as their critics, we would still be wondering looking at the birds howit felt to fly, or would have been clapping at a magicians trick who would press aswitch and make a bell ring without any connected wires! And I am not just prep-talking you here, let me cite more examples. Many years back, when I wasteaching the concept of a closed and open electrical circuit to a sixth grader, who

was evidently half as intelligent as I was at that time, to test that he understoodthe concept of an open circuit, I asked him this - “Suppose I have a wire, abattery, a switch (key) and a bulb, and I connect all of these together, butobserve that the bulb is not glowing, what can i infer from this?” In the contextof our present discussion, I wanted him to answer - “You can infer that theswitch is not closed, hence the current is not flowing in the circuit” Instead,what he answered was this - “Sir” he said matter of factly, “you can infer thatthe bulb is fused!” Was he incorrect in his answer? No! The bulb could as wellhave been fused. But a more intelligent person will overlook the simple sides ofa problem, which may indeed bring us closer to the solution, and faster.Similarly, when an ASI will deal with humans, it will definitely have vantagepoint with its mind boggling level of intelligence. but faced with simplesolutions, which it may actually be too intelligent to solve, it may go dumb.

Assumption 3: The exponential growth of technology and intelligence: Youmust have noticed that in our previous discussions, we have mentioned howdifferent AI experts have again and again drawn reference to the exponentialnature of growth of technology and intelligence. What is worth mentioning here isthat the exponential nature of any growth or change is plotted considering idealcase scenarios. What this means is that something which has a nature of growingexponentially, will continue to do so only if it is continuously provided withideal environment, conducive to its growth. Every student of science howeverknows that ideal conditions are not achievable in reality, as seldom are anyevents isolated. So basically, what happens for exponential growth is a suddenand steep growth followed by a linear line, parallel to the X-axis. This isreferred to as the plateau, a point in the graph where growth ceases. Consider thecase of a population expansion study of bacteria, conducted against time, whichis a classic example of the exponential growth rate. In this experiment, a sampleof bacteria is placed in a batch culture containing proper nutrients and kept in anenvironment very much conducive to the growth of bacteria. This batch is studiedover time and the population density of the bacteria is observed and recorded.The result is a graph which can be divided into four stages. What is interesting tonote that during the second phase of the graph, the population density of thebacteria starts growing exponentially. However, after a certain point, it reaches aplateau (called the stationary phase) where there is no visible increase in thepopulation of the culture. At this point, the birth rate and the death rate of thebacteria becomes almost equal. After the stationary phase, the graph actuallystarts climbing down as the death rate takes over the birth rate and the populationstarts diminishing. The reason for citing this experiment is to prove the point thata typical exponential curve which meets the Y-axis at infinity, is not feasible. If

that is the case, then there will come a point after which we can not increase theprocessing power of computers or make their sizes any smaller. Also, even if wedo succeed in preparing an ASI, which will continue feeding on information andmaking itself more and more intelligent, there will come a point beyond which itwill just remain static (intelligence saturation), without the option to increase itsintelligence any further.

Assumption 4: An intelligent entity will be self-motivated to keep onincreasing its intelligence: Coming to think of it, we have no idea what will bethe nature of intelligence at the ASI level. As already discussed, an increasedamount of intelligence is not synonymous to more efficient problem solving.Sometimes identifying and acknowledging the existence of a problem is all that ittakes to actually solve the problem. Also, as was previously discussed, what mayseem a pressing problem to us, may appear to be an irrelevant issue to the ASI.My bet is, an ASI, with its exceeding level of intelligence, will become what wecall Enlightened and will eventually become reclusive in nature, disinterested toparticipate in issues the humans term as problems. So with all that money andresources, we may be very well be on our way to build the most sophisticatedascetic ever!

Assumption 5: The eternal time warp: If the fourth dimension, namely - Time,excited a lesser mortal like me to wonder about it, an ASI, with its level of GodLike capabilities, will no doubt try to play tease with it. And while trying tomanipulate time, the entire universe will fall into an infinite Time Warp, one withno beginning or end. So things will start anew and zillions of years will passbefore humans come of age again and again prepare an ASI which again pressesthe Play Again button and the same movie starts again. What if we have actuallybuilt an ASI countless number of times in the past? Thousands of zillion yearsago? What if we have already lived through this all - all of it?