It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is an academic field of study which studies the goal of creating intelligence. Major AI researchers and textbooks define this field as "the study and design of intelligent agents",[1] where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success.[2] John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1955,[3] defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines".[4]
AI research is highly technical and specialized, and is deeply divided into subfields that often fail to communicate with each other.[5] Some of the division is due to social and cultural factors: subfields have grown up around particular institutions and the work of individual researchers. AI research is also divided by several technical issues. Some subfields focus on the solution of specific problems. Others focus on one of several possible approaches or on the use of a particular tool or towards the accomplishment of particular applications.
The central problems (or goals) of AI research include reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, natural language processing (communication), perception and the ability to move and manipulate objects.[6] General intelligence is still among the field's long-term goals.[7] Currently popular approaches include statistical methods, computational intelligence and traditional symbolic AI. There are a large number of tools used in AI, including versions of search and mathematical optimization, logic, methods based on probability and economics, and many others. The AI field is interdisciplinary, in which a number of sciences and professions converge, including computer science, mathematics,psychology, linguistics, philosophy and neuroscience, as well as other specialized fields such as artificial psychology.
The field was founded on the claim that a central property of humans, intelligence—the sapience of Homo sapiens—"can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it."[8] This raises philosophical issues about the nature of the mind and the ethics of creating artificial beings endowed with human-like intelligence, issues which have been addressed by myth, fiction and philosophy since antiquity.[9] Artificial intelligence has been the subject of tremendous optimism[10] but has also suffered stunningsetbacks.[11] Today it has become an essential part of the technology industry, providing the heavy lifting for many of the most challenging problems in computer science.[12]
An autonomous robot is a robot that performs behaviors or tasks with a high degree of autonomy, which is particularly desirable in fields such as space exploration, cleaning floors, mowing lawns, waste water treatment and delivering goods and services.
Some modern factory robots are "autonomous" within the strict confines of their direct environment. It may not be that every degree of freedom exists in their surrounding environment, but the factory robot's workplace is challenging and can often contain chaotic, unpredicted variables. The exact orientation and position of the next object of work and (in the more advanced factories) even the type of object and the required task must be determined. This can vary unpredictably (at least from the robot's point of view).
One important area of robotics research is to enable the robot to cope with its environment whether this be on land, underwater, in the air, underground, or in space.
A fully autonomous robot can:
Gain information about the environment (Rule #1)
Work for an extended period without human intervention (Rule #2)
Move either all or part of itself throughout its operating environment without human assistance (Rule #3)
Avoid situations that are harmful to people, property, or itself unless those are part of its design specifications (Rule #4)
An autonomous robot may also learn or gain new knowledge like adjusting for new methods of accomplishing its tasks or adapting to changing surroundings.
Like other machines, autonomous robots still require regular maintenance.
The technological singularity is the hypothesis that accelerating progress in technologies will cause a runaway effect wherein artificial intelligence will exceed human intellectual capacity and control, thus radically changing civilization in an event called the singularity.[1] Because the capabilities of such an intelligence may be impossible for a human to comprehend, the technological singularity is an occurrence beyond which events may become unpredictable, unfavorable, or even unfathomable.[2]
The first use of the term "singularity" in this context was by mathematician John von Neumann. In 1958, regarding a summary of a conversation with von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam described "ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue".[3] The term was popularized by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who argues thatartificial intelligence, human biological enhancement, or brain–computer interfaces could be possible causes of the singularity.[4] Futurist Ray Kurzweil cited von Neumann's use of the term in a foreword to von Neumann's classic The Computer and the Brain.
Proponents of the singularity typically postulate an "intelligence explosion",[5][6] where superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds, that might occur very quickly and might not stop until the agent's cognitive abilities greatly surpass that of any human.
Kurzweil predicts the singularity to occur around 2045[7] whereas Vinge predicts some time before 2030.[8] At the 2012 Singularity Summit, Stuart Armstrong did a study ofartificial general intelligence (AGI) predictions by experts and found a wide range of predicted dates, with a median value of 2040. Discussing the level of uncertainty in AGI estimates, Armstrong said in 2012, "It's not fully formalized, but my current 80% estimate is something like five to 100 years."[9]
originally posted by: Eunuchorn
I'm confused...do people actually enjoy waking up every day & carrying on their meaningless day to day existence of working, eating, & screwing?
Free me from this prison.
originally posted by: 3n19m470
As for the op, there is no accepting or rejecting, unless you mean either committing suicide or not... the superior being always puts the smack down. We would simply have to endure its presence. Unless you are proposing some unrealistic hypothetical in which we would have a choice in the matter, and at the individual level, at that...
originally posted by: HarbingerOfShadows
a reply to: Ophiuchus 13
I, for one, welcome our new alien AI overlords.