The New Mind of Technology

Johnny 5 from Short Circuit

In the article Artificial Minds Jason Holt discusses the implications of artificial intelligence. He questions if it does already exists and if we are, as we tend to think, better that it. Artificial intelligence has been discussed for many years, and we have all seen the movies where robots take over the world and destroy humans, although I believe there is a different side to the story. In movie Short Circuit a robot made to be a soldier and to kill gets hit by lighting and gains consciousness. Now I believe that some of you are a ready scared about what this robot does, but it might surprise you to hear that he wanted nothing to do with violence. There is a scene where he is content to do nothing but roll down a road and look around. This is an example of what artificial intelligence could be. Having robots as companions might actually be a good thing, a friend that we can depend to be on whenever we need them. However, I do believe that having robots replace humans would be negative; we do need contact with our own kind. This knew fear of artificial intelligence reminds me of a story that I once heard about the people in Italy being afraid to eat tomatoes, which we know to be in hundreds of Italian dishes today. Humans should not necessarily be afraid of having computers that can think like we do, there may be a silver lining in disguise in the improvements of this science.