Maria Caicedo

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is a discipline that was formally born in 1956, after several years of

studying, and can be defined in different ways according to the approach you want to take.

Artificial intelligence could be defined as the intelligence of the machines. The official definition

found on Merriam Webster website states that artificial intelligence is both a “branch of

computer science” and “the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior”.

Human beings try to provide such intelligence to the inventions they create so that they are

capable of imitating or overcoming the mental capacities of the human being such as reasoning,

compression, imagination, recognition, creativity until they can go as far as to reproduce and feel

emotions.

Artificial intelligence or AI is already among us, not in the form of cruel killer science

fiction style Terminator robots, but in a much more subtle form of intelligent technology:

chatbots, facial expression recognition, translators, personal assistants, movie recommendations,

etc. However, many people are not aware that they are already interacting with artificial

intelligence systems and often react with rejection and fear towards the very concept of an

intelligent machine that can learn on its own.

In this essay I seek to argue that despite the benefits that artificial intelligence can

provide to the human beings, it can never reach or match the human being, much less the human

brain. It can be a tool but not a second version of ourselves.

In my opinion and together with the thesis that I propose in this paper, for humans it will

be very difficult to be able to build a robot with the ability to think and feel like the homo sapiens

of today. The human brain is a super developed organ, capable of solving situations and making
complex decisions that no other known species possesses. Our brain is not a fixed organ in terms

of brain connections, there is the process called neuronal plasticity, especially active during

childhood and adolescence in which certain brain areas can expand or decrease depending on the

stimuli received by the brain or the use that have. That is why it is so recommended that children

are exposed to all kinds of cultural activities, languages, sports ... to fully develop their abilities.

Nowadays it is very common to find in science fiction films and even in very advanced

studies, machines that try to imitate the behavior of some human activities. The goal of scientists

is no longer to create robots physically similar to homo sapiens, but to make them have the

ability to feel, know and think like humans through artificial intelligence. What would happen if

these intelligent machines were really achieved and will they overcome human intelligence?

Would we be able to distinguish between a person conceived naturally, and a completely

mechanical one, but with the same capabilities? Should the development of an almost real

mechanical human be reached, would rights be needed for robots? Would there be a possibility

of forming half-organic, half-mechanical families? Or at the end of the day, we can say today

that these robots are similar or not to humans. All these and many other questions are what we

ask ourselves when thinking about the not too distant future.

The question of whether devices endowed with Artificial Intelligence (AI) can have their

own emotions is not a reality. AI researchers and neuroscientists agree that current forms cannot

have their own emotions. They have no body, no hormones, no memories of their interaction

with the world and have not gone through the process of learning life. They do not have an

emotional memory equivalent to that of man, whose construction began in childhood and

continues with the learning of life in adolescence and adulthood. Despite this, there are certain

emotions and sensations that an AI can never experience since our biochemical condition as
living beings prevents them from feeling. For example, a robot could not feel hunger, thirst,

sexual attraction, sleep, stress, fatigue or feel irritated because many of these are hormonal

functions that a computer could not imitate. A being needs biochemistry to experience these

emotions.

On the other hand, great advances have been made in the field of Artificial Intelligence to

design machines that can mechanically interpret our emotions without having their own or

interact with humans simulating empathy. This remains an imbalance in terms of

communication. The detection of human emotion is a fairly mature field that relies on video

sensors, microphones and biometrics, but interpreting emotions is very different from

experiencing them. To develop an Artificial Intelligence system with this ability, it is necessary

to try to understand how emotions and the human brain work.

In addition to all this, it is important to understand what causes emotions and reasoning.

Basically, an emotional reaction can be caused by an external stimulus that is captured by our

senses, by an internal stimulus, which could be an alteration in homeostasis (self-regulation of

the body), or it could be due to our own cognition.

The processing of the stimulus produces changes at a non-conscious level in the somatic

state, producing what is known as emotion. If it is intense enough, cognitive, social, contextual

and environment-related evaluations are carried out, generating what we call experienced

emotions.

One of the ways to study human emotions is to analyze the unconscious and

uncontrollable changes that occur in the human body. Thanks to the latest advances in

neuroimaging and neurotechnology, we can measure these changes accurately and then study

them but from this point to being able to imitate them technologically we are very far away.
 In conclusion, all this moves us away from creating an algorithm that is capable of

copying how human emotions occur and reminds us reliably that computational models are not

the human brain, they cannot replicate their complex functioning and that they are simply far

from doing so. In the end, human emotions also depend on the perception we have of the outside

and of our interior.

Another idea on which we can rely to find the difference and compare the robots of our

species is the language. For this argument I want to rely on a very specific example which is

currently a trend in the world of artificial intelligence. The humanoid robot built by Hanson

Robotics Limited, called Sophia.

In a presentation carried out on a University campus in the country of Colombia,

questions were raised to the robot as general but complex as this: "What is a human?" The

question is complicated from every point of view, but Sophia replied with impressive simplicity:

"It is an intelligent way of life that communicates through articulated language." The answer not

only describes a human, but it gives rise to a new question: is Sophia a way of life with a degree

of consciousness comparable to that of humans?

In a conversation with her we can notice that she has a lot of information and that she

expresses it clearly, so it seems that she is able to meet some characteristics of a human:

intelligence and language. So, is there a difference between this robot and us? At first glance,

there is not much difference between talking to a human and talking to Sophia, because both she

and we receive information from the environment or from a partner, we process and respond.

In this sense, Sophia could mimic characteristics of a human, because, with a greater

development of her limbs and an advance in her design, her facial gestures and her body
movements can become equal to ours, but will Sophia ever perform all of these characteristics

correlated with any emotion? Similarly, at present you can recognize aspects of the weather and

over time you could recognize the temperature of the environment you are in, choose the clothes

you wear and the color of your hair, so that, at a certain moment, we could make jokes (of which

he would laugh or to which he would respond with a complaint), ask him how he is today and

even tell him some of our secrets (which he would keep better than any human). These are

aspects that are part of the Turing Test to determine if a robot has mental states and, therefore, if

it can be considered a form of human life. Functionalists such as Hilary Putnam would endorse

this as a form of consciousness and possibly certify Sophia as a human.

However, do we know if we can be sure that Sophia's language is equal to the language

of human beings? John Searle conducts a mental experiment called "The Chinese Room" that can

help answer this question. In the experiment, Searle imagines that he goes into a room that has a

hole where texts in Chinese enter and another one where he must respond with texts in the same

language. Searle doesn't know Chinese, but he has an instruction manual that contains the

characters in Chinese and their equivalence in the words of his language. With this, you can

receive the texts in Chinese and respond with accuracy also in Chinese.

A Chinese interlocutor outside the machine could perfectly think that the machine

understands what he is saying and that he is having a conversation with him. However, the truth

is that, inside, Searle has no idea what his interlocutor is saying, nor does he know how to speak

in Chinese. Owning language is much more than speaking and responding with certainty, error

also counts and even lies are a sign of the most human. Finally, it is to do things with words, the

search for that meaning is what makes us properly human.

we talk to a human and Sophia is very different: the robot processes the syntactic information we

provide; that is, it compares the phonetic signs with a database that it has installed (such as

Searle compared the characters in Chinese with the words of its language) and yields an answer.

A human, on the other hand, has a capacity to learn, through the repetition of acts: semantic

rules. Thus, he gradually learns the meaning of words as he learns to use the rules by which those

who teach him language associate the things of the world with words. We could end by

emphatically saying that Sophia cannot create meanings or any type of institution; It has a lot of

semantics but no pragmatic. the meaning is not in the signs and symbols themselves; it's in the

mind.

Regardless all of the information that show us why robots cannot be compared or will

never reach the same level as the human mind or human species overall, there’s some benefits

which can help us to the technological advance and be benefits for our lives and the world. One

of the most important benefits that can exist for artificial intelligence can be: Award complex

and dangerous tasks for humans such as space exploration or mining. These machines can be

useful to overcome the limitations that humans have, Management and analysis of data and

records in areas as sensitive as financial activity allowing to detect anomalies and fraud and

organize capital in the best way.

That is why an artificial intelligence master is one of the most sought-after features in

industry professionals. Artificial intelligence can perform repetitive tasks that require a large

amount of resources and time, increasing their efficiency. In addition, lacking emotions, it is

possible to process and make decisions in a completely rational way. Advances in medicine
Another of the great applications of artificial intelligence is in the development of intelligent

algorithms. These allow to evaluate and diagnose patients, simulate surgeries and brain

operations and apply radiosurgery in cases of risk where precision is fundamental and in addition

to all this one of the benefits could be the help and company for the elderly, such as doing simple

cooking actions or house actions which can be difficult for them at their age.

In conclusion, Technology can make us more human, by giving us more freedom to be

more creative. The speed at which new inventions expand increases exponentially, faster and

faster. The landline phone took 65 years to reach one hundred million homes, while Facebook

reached that number in just five years and Pokémon Go did it in 25 days. Today there are twice

as many mobile devices in the world as inhabitants. Although three thousand 900 million people

still lack Internet access, seven out of ten out of 20% of the world's poorest people have a mobile

phone, sometimes before drinking water. Artificial intelligence is becoming the most important

technology in terms of progress and some improvements in quality of life that can potentially

cause in the history of mankind, but everything will always be limited. No robot or technological

device will be intelligent enough to be able to imitate the human species, as said above, nor for

its ability to "brain", nor for its language. This may have a breakthrough in the future, but it will

never be able to imitate our species.

McCarthy, J., and P.J. There is. “Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of

Artificial Intelligence.” Readings in Artificial Intelligence, Morgan Kaufmann, June 27, 2014,

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780934613033500337.

Cole, David. “The Chinese Room Argument.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

Stanford University, Feb. 20, 2020, plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/.

"Artificial Intelligence." Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-

webster.com/dictionary/artificial intelligence.

Pontifical Bolivarian University. “Talk of the Sophia Robot in Medellín, Colombia | UPB

Summer School ”. YouTube, 2018