For centuries, the possibility of “thinking machines” has intrigued some of history’s greatest thinkers. Rene Descartes (1596-1650; inventor of the Cartesian Coordinate System), Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716; independently co-invented Calculus, with Isaac Newton being the other inventor) and Alan Turing (1912-1954; trailblazing mathematician, whose work cracking Nazi Germany’s cryptography codes played a critical role in ending WW2) are some of the illustrious names that seriously contemplated the possibility of “thinking machines” or as we have come to call them, Artificial Intelligence (AI).
It appears that the possibility also holds a major attraction for mere mortals as well. Man-made creations with the ability to think have been a staple of science fiction since at least the 19th century. From the classic horror novel, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, to the mid-20th super successful novels by Isaac Asimov (Isaac Asimov would formulate the four laws of robotics, that more than 50 years later, the AI ethics community has not really been able to improve upon), and finally Hollywood blockbusters like Terminator, Matrix and I, Robot (itself based on a collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov). These stories/movies have earned for their originators eternal fame, millions of dollars (perhaps billions in some cases) or both. We might not think of Frankenstein’s monster as a machine or AI but as he was a man-made creation, at least equal in intelligence to his creator Frankenstein, and vastly superior in brute strength, he would count as some form of embodied, “Artificially Intelligent” being. Mary Shelley had other interesting connections to the world of computing and one to feminism. She wrote Frankenstein during a summer holiday that she was spending with her boyfriend (later husband) and some friends. One of those friends was Lord Byron, the famed poet who was also father to Ada Lovelace, intellectual partner to Charles Babbage, the Cambridge math professor credited with building a forerunner to the computer, a mechanical device known as the Difference Engine, whom she met at the age of 17 in 1832. She is recognized as the first person to describe how a computer would do iteration and for this she is frequently recognized as the world’s first computer programmer. The programming language “Ada” is named in her honour. Mary Shelley was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the woman widely believed to have launched the feminist movement with the publication of her book, Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Sadly, she would die 11 days after giving birth to Mary Shelley, thus she didn’t see her daughter grow up to be even more famous than she was.
The year 1956 was a special one for the “thinking machines” obsession. It was the year the first academic conference on AI was held. Since then, slowly but surely, science fiction has been turning into scientific fact, though not without major setbacks on at least two major occasions (google AI winter for more info). Progress has reached such a stage that it is very clear now that AI will be one of the great undertakings of the 21st century. Perhaps, given that fact, it wasn’t so surprising that the inaugural thealvinreport.com Roundtable would focus on AI. A separate communique containing the details of what was discuss at the Roundtable has been issued.
A very valid and rather difficult question kept being brought up by the moderator, the very brilliant Flora Fabyan, Managing Director, Bank of Industry Investment and Trust. The question centered around the feasibility of integrating AI into an economy such as the Nigerian economy that has a significantly large informal sector. Its difficulty was even buttressed by a guest, Tayo Fabunmi, General Manager, Finance at AMNI Petroleum, by giving the specific example of the informal human network that managed public transportation in Lagos popularly referred to as “agberos”, pointing out that though informal, they controlled a transportation economy whose Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was valued at $10 billion. He wondered how do you get such individuals to adopt AI.
I kept thinking about this question on the way home. It occurred to me that a possible way out would be not to target informal workers individually but to target their associations and cooperatives, especially the large ones. If the association is large enough, it is bound to have administration challenges that AI can help ameliorate. To take the specific example of the agberos, a $10 billion economy definitely has money to spend on AI but targeting individual agberos will not make sense. However, proffering AI solutions to their association to help manage their administrative challenges does make sense.
Another rather indirect way might to be for the government to make such a huge commitment to AI, such that it leverages it across all the services it renders to the public. This way, AI would still be making a large impact on the lives of the members of the public, and in this case irrespective of whether they plied their trade in the formal or informal sector. Such an action by the government should leave a large economic footprint.
As I round up, I feel the need to admit that when it comes to the subject of AI, I am not just interested in its underlying mathematical/statistical techniques, the technology, or its impact on business and society. I am also interested in its philosophical underpinnings. Here is where I think the subject is most interesting, certainly most controversial.
The reason for the controversy is that right from AI’s very beginnings in the 1950s, there has been a hardcore, purist tribe within the AI community that considers man to be just one type of many possible thinking machines; a flesh and blood machine that is carbon-based as opposed to a conventional computer that is silicon-based. In this conceptualization, “thinking” as carried out by man is just a form of information processing, essentially no different from the information processing carried out by digital computers or even that carried out by man’s genetic DNA. From this they draw the conclusion that “consciousness” as experienced by man is just a form of information processing on a higher level. The implication of this position is the denial of the existence of the “soul”, which traditionally has been considered the seat of consciousness. This further implies that there is no physical law preventing a man-made machine from achieving consciousness, we just don’t know how to do it…yet. This belief is the basis for the robots and cyborgs running amok in the movies mentioned at the beginning of this write-up.
Personally, I don’t think I will be much troubled, irrespective of how the debate pans out. My only regret is that I will most likely not live long enough to see it resolved.
