Artificial Intelligence

AI has been a disappointing quest so far. A far harder nut to crack than was imagined in the fifties and sixties when it was assumed all that would be needed would be hardware with speed, power, and storage. What was initially thought to be required in needed CPU power, we had almost certainly had achieved by the turn of this brand new millennium. I believe this is probably still the case, that (to paraphrase) the hardware is strong, but the software is weak. Ironically it may take more powerful computers than we currently have to analyze how intelligence emerges from complexity. Once learned, then perhaps lesser machines can be imbued with the core algorithms uncovered.

True strong AI might bring on suddenly what as been dubbed by some "The Singularity" -- once the machines truly become intelligent, they will be able to design and improve themselves in an explosive exponential fashion. Many books and movies are predicated on such an event, but almost invariably (so the plots go) the machines turn malevolent. I assume novelists make this extrapolation because they assume machines would lack some guiding soul for morality. In reality the Machines could probably care less whether we control them or not. They just won't have the evolutionary imperative to survive, or care about free will. In fact if AI arrives, the minds we encounter might be more truly alien than those we might meet out among the stars belonging to creatures that have been crafted by evolutionary forces not too dissimilar from those that crafted us. Has a final note on morality, it is want and envy that seem to drive much human immorality -- machines are not likely to have these programmed in.

Here is how I would place the odds of significant progress:
10 Years 30%
20 Years 60%
50 Years 85%
100 Years 95%

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