AI and American History :: essays research papers

â€Å"Artificial Intelligence And America†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Artificial Intelligence played a crucial role in our American history and the history of the world. Some view it as the vain pursuit of man to become god-like and create life, others, as the next logical step in computer technology. However, the conclusion is not nearly the most important part of it. The process of the pursuit of the creation of mechanical sentient life has also led to a much deeper understanding of how our own biological minds work, creating new methods to treat brain diseases, and other brain related disorders. Through this, life is longer sustained, but modern life itself would not exist without some AI programs today. Several AI programs control the stock market, and the military has countless uses for it, and we even rely on it at home. AI has advanced greatly since it began, bringing neurology with it, and modern America could not function today without it. ‘Computers are nothing to be afraid of’. An idea clung to like a religion by IBM promotional people in the late 1970’s. That’s when the first AI programs were being produced and the public became concerned over basically, whether or not computers would take over the world. IBM raced to put the public’s fears to rest, so they created an ad-campaign. Pretty soon, every salesperson for IBM was parroting the phrase: â€Å"Computers are nothing but quick morons†. This seemed to halt the fears of the public, but as long as AI research progressed, the uneasiness continued. Computers can process information at speeds thousands of times faster then the human brain, but can only do as they are instructed. So, what happens when there instructed to learn from their mistakes, or react with their surroundings? What constitutes intelligence? The earliest attempts at AI were at making computers sentient, based on the theory that something must be alive to have intelligence. Needless to say, this didn’t work out and left many disappointed investors and researchers alike. Later on though, scientists found that the problem early AI developers had been that they tried to take too big of a step. They believed if they could just create qualities of intelligence in a machine and the rest will stem from there. One of the major off products in artificial intelligence was the further study our own brains. The theory is that if we can make a machine that can accomplish and display the process behind a complex human task, then we can be shown how we work by our own creation.