Machines, artificial intelligence, life, intelligences, what is the future?
Is it a blessing that we are here in this time and space?
From the first single cell life on earth, to now has passed 3.5 billion years, our life also flexed a few decades, starting from the first fire of human beings, to the emergence of social groups, work revolution, human civilization is moving forward at an exponential rate of development, and the digital revolution, artificial intelligence may be the last invention of mankind.
We have seen science fiction works, robots, human-machine combinations, human-computer interconnections, intelligent machines, are gradually one by one by human creation and realization, human artistic and cultural creativity, by science and technology, one by one to verify and practice, as the current hottest Artificial Intelligence (AI), in the last two years, the big bang appeared in the side of each one of us, all of which are too sudden and too fast to think about how to go next! It's all too sudden and too fast to think about how to utilize and adapt to it next.
What will the future of artificial intelligence be like? Will it bring opportunities or disasters to mankind? All of this is not just a purely technical issue, but involves the entire human destiny community.
Let's take a brief look at the development of artificial intelligence.
The development and current status of artificial intelligence
Since the invention of the first computer, the topic and practice of artificial intelligence have been combined together. After John McCarthy proposed the term "artificial intelligence" in 1956, artificial intelligence has experienced many developmental booms and valleys, but the related scientific research and practice has never stopped. With the development of human science and technology, computer "rule-based" "intelligent" computing, slowly began to come into everyone's view:
In 1959, the checkers program beat the then chess master Robert Nerai;
In 1964, the ELIZA chatbot realized the communication between computer and human through text;
In 1965, the expert system program DENDRAL was able to analyze experimental data to determine the molecular structure of unknown compounds;
In 1968, the robot Shakey was able to autonomously perceive, analyze its environment, plan its behavior and perform tasks;
In 1976, expert systems appeared in various fields such as medical consulting, manufacturing, financial accounting and finance;
In 1980, XCON's "Expert System" saved Digital Equipment Corporation over four thousand dollars a year;
In 1995, Alice, a robotic program, was able to use the Internet to increase its data set and optimize content;
In 1997, DeepBlue defeated world chess champion Kasparov;
1998, the American company created Furby, the first pet robot;
In 2002, iRobot marketed the Roomba floor sweeping robot;
In 2011, the artificial intelligence program Watson took part in a quiz show and beat two human champions;
In 2014, driverless car technology began to appear ;
In 2016-2017, AlphaGo, a self-learning program, defeated the Go champion;
With the expert system, visual detection, neural network computing, data volume explosion... When the accumulation of quantitative changes in technology reaches a certain stage tends to cause new qualitative changes, and in 2017, after the new neural network architecture Transformer was proposed, artificial intelligence-related concepts began to blow out, and the 100-mode wars, various tools and applications pounced to meet, and nowadays (as of the beginning of this article in early 2024), AI has already appeared in the form of breakthroughs from the previous human cognition in a number of fields:
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Artificial Intelligence changes the pattern of the industry, and large areas of heavy, repetitive, and even dangerous tasks have begun to be replaced by AI, such as assembly line production workers, illustrators, simultaneous translators, entry-level journalists, anchors, entry-level graphic designers, film and television production ...
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In the past, the professional AI module, and is not limited to a certain field, such as medical, and now the large language model is basically a hundred know-how, know-it-all, all industries can be based on the large language model, it is easy to establish the professional field of the scene of intelligence;
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Artificial Intelligence, to achieve natural dialogue and communication between people and computers, you can discuss any topic with AI experts (the world's strongest model Claude 3 subversion of physics/chemistry! 2 hours to crack the results of a year of experiments by a doctor), and complete replacement of the online search;
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AI through the study of loved ones left before the death of the audio and video, has been able to convert it into digital form, a large number of digital human anchor (Xijiajia, Du Xiaoxiao, Lin Kaikai, Ye Youyi, Liu Yexi, AYAYI, Silicon Intelligence Aixia ... ) have appeared.
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The ability of AIGC has reached the level of fake to real, all kinds of AI-created articles, pictures, videos, began to fill the Internet...
AI is developing at a super speed, and new things appear every day, which also brings a series of challenges to human beings, such as laws and regulations, education and training systems. People haven't even had a chance to react well before being swept into this wave...
What might artificial intelligence develop into in the future?
The development of artificial intelligence, now to a singularity?
Tegmark, a scientist who has published the Data Universe Hypothesis (NUH), defines life as a process that is large enough to maintain its own complexity and is capable of replication; the object of replication is not matter, but information, and we can think of life as a self-replicating information-processing system, whose information (software) determines both its behavior and the blueprint of its hardware.
Depending on the level of complexity, Tegmark has developed three levels of life forms, namely Haplogeny 1.0, Life 2.0, and Life 3.0:
Life 1.0 originated in the biological stage 4 billion years ago, and will not be able to redesign its hardware and software during its lifetime; only evolution can bring about change;
Life 2.0 began about 100,000 years ago, and is the cultural stage that humans were born thinking, in which they can redesign their software, such as learning languages, skills and other complex abilities, as well as reshape their worldview and goals.
Life 3.0 is a reinvention of technology by artificial intelligence sitting at a stage where life can dramatically redesign not only its software, but also its hardware, without having to wait for the gift of evolution.
Life 3.0 doesn't exist on Earth yet, but many who specialize in AI believe that it could come within a world, perhaps even within our lifetimes.
Many people may have a question about this, and we can't be sure if we reach that point, perhaps the turning point will be when AI becomes self-aware (or maybe it already is, the public just can't have it). But no matter how to define, the current AI technology, has crossed a gradient, the most critical is the self-acceleration has been qualitative change.
So, we can guess what will happen next?
In the next few years, the speed of human beings may not be able to keep up with the development speed of robots, and human cognition, which needs to be fed by machines, has now begun to appear.
Human-computer interaction is becoming easier, closer, and more real-time, zoom cameras, sonar night vision systems, taste regulators, smart gear for the human body is being developed to communicate with the human brain through brain-computer interfaces, the human body has built-in AI intelligence modules, which can be updated at any time to download the knowledge base, and everyone is an all-around domain expert.
The current Internet of Things is quickly becoming a real in for the intelligent interconnection of all things, almost everything man-made, can collect data and networked uploads, so that AI real-time understanding of our changing world and give feedback, according to the human set to work, mankind is slowly beginning to free themselves from work.
Once AI quantum computers get a breakthrough, the amount of calculations that used to take thousands of years can be done in seconds, and the level of calculations can go down to the molecular and atomic level, quantized AI, can take over most of the difficult human jobs (patient treatment, drug research, new material development, laws and regulations), and a large part of people's lives can go into the semi-dimensional universe to interact with the AI-created worlds to interact with;
Subsequently, AI begins to fix the AI programs written by humans and write programs for themselves, general-purpose AI emerges and develops at an uncontrollable rate, human understanding can no longer keep up with the development of AI, and in front of AI, humans begin to become like an ant;
At this point, humans and AI may have conflicts and multiple streams of assignments, situations that appear inside science fiction, appear in reality, affecting the development of humans and AI.
In the end, humans can't stop the development of AI, AI may appear as a self-aware body, and human experts can't understand how it is formed, and human consciousness finally creates a conscious virtual entity (or a new life), and due to AI's level of knowledge far exceeding human understanding, it begins to move towards the universe, while humans may move towards two endings:
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AI controlling humans, or leading to their extinction;
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AI and humans coexist peacefully and collaborate to create a cosmic intelligence body, where AI and humans become one, human consciousness and physical body are separated, and human consciousness is transmitted into space as data for space travel ....
How to choose about the future fate of humanity?
Artificial Intelligence unleashes unprecedented power This means that the next 10 years could be the best of times for mankind Possibly the worst of times, we will soon be faced with the transformative consequences of AI The question is, will it be a utopia, or a cataclysm?
This not only provokes humans to think: what are the boundaries and relationships between humans and machines? Asimov mentioned three major laws inside the novel I, Robot (also mentioned in the movie of the same name), which are used to constrain the behavior of machines:
The first law, a robot must not harm a human being, or cause a human being to be harmed through inaction;
The Second Law, that a robot must obey commands given by humans unless those commands contradict the First Law;
The third law, that a robot must protect itself without violating the first and second laws.
This is a kind of ideal law setting, as a kind of basic moral norms and guiding principles, in the artificial intelligence and robotics applications of the ethical and legal aspects of the important significance and role, corresponding to the national regulations have also begun to formulate (followed by this site to update the corresponding regulations manual).
Relative to the current situation, human beings are still able to control AI and ensure the interests of human beings. When AI starts to have self-awareness and develops to be equal to human beings, how to deal with the relationship between human beings and robots in order to ensure the interests of human beings and achieve a balance in all aspects is a problem that has to be faced early;
This, in turn, not only raises our question, what is the nature of consciousness? Why do humans, who are made up of matter, have subjective experiences?
And under what circumstances does artificial intelligence develop self-awareness?
Is it a product of the development of technology and civilization to a certain stage?
If so, does such a civilization already exist in the wider universe? This is a Fermi paradox that until now we have not been able to prove.
Regardless of what the future holds, humanity should embrace AI technology in a better light, by adapting the technology to humans, by making individuals stronger, by carefully improving the technology, by being far-sighted and avoiding the pitfalls, and by making the Earth's civilization a better place, where that life may flourish for billions of years on Earth, or even beyond it, far beyond the most uninhibited dreams of our human ancestors.
Look forward to that day!
