Doctor, I am a robot... or what's wrong with our approach towards AI

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2 min read

We, software developers, are a product of our society. We grew up reading stories and fairytales that were created by the people who came before us. These stories influenced us, and formed our views on how things should be. But, as we discover more, build more, and gain knowledge, we may realize that some of these beloved stories may not be a good representation of our reality. What if one of these fairytales is how we view intelligence, and, by extension -- ourselves?

As a neuron simulation technology skeptic, I am very impressed with the achievements that this technology has reached. This breakthrough, coupled in time with the digitalization of our world, has clearly shown us the magic of big numbers and big data.

Let's stop for a moment and appreciate the big picture -- the amount of information that is being processed by the modern Internet is just astonishing. Elon Musk, for example, just bought one of the biggest commodities in human history -- Twitter, an archive of information about this world and us, humans.

Humor me and imagine an anarcho-capitalistic world, in which this commodity is allowed to be used without any restrictions. How much information can be extracted about an average user just by looking at what, when, and how they post on the service? Or if they posted tweets with geolocation markers?

If you had enough information on them, would you be able to train an AI to act like them? (Yes, you would -- although it would be a very shallow copy).

Now imagine if we had this kind of information on all human beings.

Could we predict wars? Could we predict crimes? Could we optimize our logistics to feed the world?

What if we add observations made using satellites and space telescopes?

And, finally, would this not make our Planet act and feel like that big living creature it is finally got intelligent?

Color me a crazy atheist, but sometimes I feel like the Bible is not about the past and God is not our father, and heaven is something that we will eventually build.

Oh, let me ramble a bit on a Friday :-D