Critical Thinking Blog Post #2

        Artificial Intelligence--intelligence of machines ("Artificial Intelligence") which have been assist our life for over two decades. Technology itself as fastest growth in the world, indeed is another great revolution in human history. Today, people are expecting more from this kind of technology, and scientists aim to invent smarter machines to help us do the hard and dangerous jobs, so we can just lay back relax. One of big invention of this AI is robotics. Living in 21st century, the capabilities of a robot may surprise a lot of people. Like what we watched from LIB100 class last week, certain robots are created for military purpose. I remember there is an interesting robot has human facial expression, it leads us to wonder that whether robots have conscious or not, the same thing happened in the movie of Artificial Intelligent, when the little boy was about to be destroyed, the audiences were trying to stop it although they were told that the boy was just a machine. Many people believe that it's just a matter of time that one day robotics can think, just like humans. However, David Gelernter, an expert of computer science and humanist disagrees the idea (Gelernter 202). He states that "today's mainstream ideas about human and artificial thought lead nowhere (Gelernter 202)." In this quote, he thinks that there is no way artificial thought is comparable with human minds. There are several reasons to support his idea. For example, we humans' minds can wonder around, like teens sometimes are absentminded in class. David claims that there is no way computers can do something like this unless it can free-associate (Gelernter 202). Another example is that the way people think when they are alert is very different when they are not alert (Gelernter 203). No matter how strong AI will be in the future, it will never have the ability to function like humans.
      Notwithstanding, other scientists have different opinions with David Gelernter, like Ray Kurzweil. He argues that we humans cannot be enhanced like robots to share the vast of interneuronal connections and neurotransmitter concentration levels of knowledge, skills and learning (Kurzweil 138). In addition, robots have more accurate and reliable memory than humans. They don't need to worry about how big or how long the memory can be since they will memorize exact events (Kurzweil 138). Humans misconstruct their past events.
     Every new technology has been criticized by some people. After all, most of these are like two-blades knives, you have to be aware of both sides in order to utilize them efficiently. For me, I do like the idea of strong AI help our life easier. However, I don't think that the assumption that one day robots will have conscious and emotions like humans can happen in the future.