Artificial Intelligence: Mankind's Last Invention

It could be terrible and it could be great. It's not clear. Right? But one thing is for sure, we will not control it.

Go is arguably the most complex board game in existence. Its goal is simple: surround more territory than your opponent. This game has been played by humans for the past 2,500 years and is thought to be the oldest board game still being played today. However, it's not only humans that are playing this game now. In 2016, Google DeepMind's AlphaGo beat 18-time world champion Lee Sedol in four out of five games.

Now, normally a computer beating a human at a game like chess or checkers wouldn't be that impressive. But Go is different. Go cannot be solved by brute force. Go cannot be predicted. There are over 10 to the 170 moves possible in Go. To put that into perspective, there are only 10 to the 80 atoms in the observable universe.

AlphaGo was trained using data from real human Go games. It ran through millions of games and learned the techniques used and even made up new ones that no one had ever seen, and this is very impressive alone. However, what many people don't know is that only a year after AlphaGo's victory over Lee Sedol, a brand new AI called AlphaGo Zero beat the original AlphaGo. Not in four out of five games. Not in five out of five games. Not in ten out of ten games. But beat AlphaGo 100 to zero. 100 games in a row.

The most impressive part? It learned how to play with zero human interaction. This technique is more powerful than any previous version. Why? It isn't restricted to human knowledge. No data was given. No historical figures were given. With just the bare-bones rules, AlphaGo Zero surpassed the previous AlphaGo in only 40 days of learning. In only 40 days, it surpassed over 2,500 years of strategy and knowledge. It only played against itself and is now regarded as the best Go player in the world, even though it isn't human.

But wait, if this AI learned how to play without any human interaction, made up strategies of its own and then beat us with those strategies, then that means there's more non-human knowledge about Go than there is human. And if we continue to develop artificial intelligence, then that means there's going to be more and more non-human intelligence. Eventually, there's going to be a point where we represent the minority of intelligence. Maybe even a very minuscule amount.

That's fine though, we can just turn it off. Right? It's a thought, but think! When modern-day humans begin to take over the planet, why didn't the chimps and Neanderthals turn us off? If this artificial intelligence becomes super intelligent and learns through and is connected to the Internet, we can't just shut down the entire Internet; there's no off switch.

So, what happens if we end up stuck with AI that is constantly and exponentially getting smarter than we are? What if it gets to a point that us, humans, get in the way? And the AI hits the off switch on humani... When people think of AI, they tend to think of super intelligent AI. AI that serves the human race, but could also end us at a moment's notice. But is this REALLY going to happen?

Pop culture, mostly movies, tend to depict AI not as benevolent creations, but rather as robots with a malicious intent. Except for "TARS" in "Interstellar," he's pretty cool. Yeah, you can use it to find your way back in the ship after I blow you out of the airlock.

There's a lot more to AI than you might think. There's a lot more types that serve different purposes. Artificial Narrow Intelligence, also known as weak AI, is the only form of artificial intelligence that humanity has created so far. It makes this sound kind of bad, but trust me, it does a really good job at what it's supposed to do.

Narrow AI is AI that was created for the sole purpose of handling one task. It's the kind of AI that AlphaGo is. Narrow AI is good at speech and image recognition and also at playing games like chess or Go, or even pretty complex games like “Dota 2.” At the International 2017 World Championship, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence destroyed pro player Dendi 2-0. But much like AlphaGo Zero, it wasn't taught how to...