When Computers Become Human

When you place a couple of people in a room together and ask them to write up random thoughts for a few minutes, chances are that at the end of the exercise you will get pieces of paper revealing very similar words.

It’s a process known as Automatic Writing and the Surrealists and Dadaists (two artist groups that were big after the Second World War) experimented with this non stop. It's still a sport among writers and artists.

But automatic writing is today again very important for a different reason. That is because many scientists and engineers are busy trying to do the opposite. They are trying to make computers and machines think like humans.

We believe that humans are different from machines because they are conscious. Machines are not conscious. But how about this in the future?  

How far have scientists come? That is a question I wondered about, watching Eagle Eye the other day, at the recommendation of Aodan. What to tell him after this movie. “Don’t worry, it will never come this far” is not going to be adequate. 

The days that the world will be ruled by a computer are of course far off. But research I did for my Oddy and Noddy film script (2004) showed me a big revelation; creating a conscious computer is THE BULL’S EYE for scientists these days. The Number 2 biggest achievement (after the 'God particle', you know, the worm hole thing CERN is doing). 

So because it is such a big thing, if a conscious machine would be created, it would be big news. There even is an organisation which keeps track of this. If you want to know whether someone has ‘cracked the genetic code’ of consciousness yet, just check out the Loebner Prize’s pages. This is a prize that is awarded every year to a scientist who comes closest to passing the Turing Test.

The Turing Test is named after the person who first asked the question “can machines think”. That was in 1950 (when the Surrealists and Dadaists lived, coincidentally).

Every year a team of experts comes together in Brighton. Inventors can present their 'thinking machines' there. The experts are not told whether what they're dealing with is a human or a machine. The experts ask lots and lots of questions. If a machine manages to convince the experts it is human, it wins.

This has never happened so far! Should we be thankful for this? I have NO IDEA! The game industry would be even better if they created more life like thinking in games. But films like Eagle Eye and iRobot make you wonder...

So keep checking things.  That way you fight for your humanity.