Can machines think

This is a blog I wrote in 2013, something that is no longer on the internet, so I am reposting it for nostalgia. I wrote this, and in 2023, the very same AI I predicted all those years back came for my job. I lost my job to automation.

2013 Article down below:

Can machines think, how can they think, and why should they think? Those are the questions being raised by many scientists these days.  It is a hot topic in many blockbuster movies, and ‘I, Robot ’, the new blockbuster movie adapted from the novel written by Isaac Asimov sometime in the early 1950s, deals with such a topic; so this debate is not something new.  The ones who say ‘yes’ are increasing in number, and the ones who say ‘no’ are decreasing as years pass.  New technologies are bringing the hope of an AI (artificial intelligence) machine becoming a reality in the near future.  It will happen in our lifetime; that is what scientists at MIT and others all over the world say when they are interviewed on this subject.  The biggest argument on their side is that a supercomputer analyzes data far faster and more accurately than a human brain, and the synapses in the human brain are configured more like a machine, and the data is analyzed just the same.  They are pretty confident of achieving AI by 2020.  One might say it is a fool's pride at such an assumption, but those who say that should know that was what was said about computers some 70 years back.  People did not believe the earth was round before somebody made the assumption that it was.  But some might say that not every assumption was proved right.  There is weight to that argument too but not for being proved right but not from being right.

Research is being conducted at MIT and other research centers on AI machines.  Some advanced research is also being conducted related to AI but not directly in many R&D centers in Bangalore.  Right now, who knows what breakthrough is being achieved somewhere by someone.  All they have to do is copy a human brain and build an artificial form of it.  That is where the real trick is, you see: copying something of which you know very little is very difficult.  The biological workings of a brain can be mimicked to some extent, but most of it is still a mystery to us.  And there is more to the brain than just biology.  Intelligence is more than a few synaptic firings in the brain.  It is a daunting task to achieve AI, and it might probably be the most significant achievement in the history of scientific achievements.  The answer to this debate will let itself known to us in our lifetime.  “Isn’t the future exciting? I, for one, can’t wait to know what’s going to happen tomorrow?”

If AI does ever come into existence or not, it will definitely prove a challenge worth taking up for us humans.  In this challenge, we might just as well find out our own potential when we delve into the workings of our own brain to make a copy of it.  A challenge indeed, but not something we cannot conquer.  To the unending search for perfection, we drive into the future of AI, where even my fridge would be self-aware.