It is difficult for the supermind to communicate with people - they simply do not keep up with it

Introduction

Machines have already surpassed humans in many areas, but the general level of human intellectual development is incomparably higher. But the day is not far off when machines will become superintelligent.

The Fritz program plays chess significantly stronger than the leading grandmasters, but it cannot be called superintelligent, since it is superior to humans in only one narrow area.

Nick Bostrom believes that superintelligence is an intellect that is many times superior to the most outstanding people in mental development, scientific and technical activities, worldly wisdom and the development of social skills.

The book provides a variety of information about the history of artificial intelligence and the current state of affairs. The author ponders whether the superintelligence will be helpful or destructive, friendly or hostile.

Reading this book is very difficult: scientific vocabulary, examples from physics, mathematics, economics and nanotechnology, along with numerous tables and diagrams, do not allow the reader to relax for a minute. The author himself admits that he tried to make the book easier to read, but he failed. He also warns that not all information is reliable and has scientific confirmation. At the same time, the book is of interest to those who are not indifferent to the future of humanity and who are interested in modern technologies computerquestions.

The past and present of artificial intelligence

After the appearance of the first computers in the 1940s, scientists started talking about the imminent emergence of the superintelligence. The predictions did not come true, but modern futurists, like their predecessors, believe that superintelligent machines will be created in the near future.

History of artificial intelligence

1642-1940s - the zero generation - the simplest mechanical computers.

1940–1955 - first generation - vacuum tube computers.

1955-1965 - second generation - computers on transistors.

1965-1980 - the third generation - computers on integrated circuits.

1980–… - fourth generation - computers on huge integrated circuits.

The fifth generation, focused on distributed computing, was never created; it was to become the basis for devices capable of imitating thinking.

In the summer of 1956, a group of scientists came to the first symposium on artificial intelligence at Dartmouth College in the United States. It was this event that became the starting point for research in the field of artificial intelligence, and many of the participants in that symposium gained worldwide fame. At first, they created only small systems, each of which in the laboratory could do something previously inaccessible to machine intelligence.

One of the earliest systems, The Logical Theorist, succeeded in proving theorems, one of which was more elegant than the original.

In the mid-1970s, the fashion for artificial intelligence passed. Sponsors refused to finance projects to create artificial intelligence, because they considered this direction unpromising.

The new golden age of artificial intelligence can be considered the early 1980s, when Japan launched a major project to create fifth-generation computers. The project was funded by the government in conjunction with commercial structures, and its goal was to create a high-performance machine that thinks like a person and can work with large databases. Many countries have followed Japan's example and resumed work on artificial intelligence. The developers tried to create the so-called expert systems - programs that process significant databases designed to partially replace a person in various fields of activity. Hundreds of such systems were created, the codes for which were manually written by thousands of programmers. However, after a few years it became obvious that to develop, controlling and updating expert systems is difficult and expensive. Thus, the project to create fifth generation computers ceased to exist by the end of the 1980s.

Since the 1990s, methods of neural systems and genetic algorithms, based on modeling the human brain, began to develop.

In what areas is artificial intelligence superior to humans

By now, machine intelligence has already outstripped humans in many activities. Previously, people naively believed that in order to become a strong chess player, you need to have developed abstract thinking, be a strong strategist, be able to create cunning flexible plans and try to "read" the opponent's thoughts. It turned out that the strongest chess player can be defeated by a program with a special algorithm connected to a powerful processor. However, such artificial intelligence is limited only to the game of chess.

Checkers. In 1994, the CHINOOK program was able to defeat the reigning world champion. This was the first time that the program actually became the world champion in intellectual games.

Chess. In 1997, the Deep Blue program won a match against world champion Garry Kasparov, who confessed that he had noticed glimpses of real intelligence and superhuman ingenuity in the machine.

Scrabble. In 2002, the program defeated the strongest players.

Today, these achievements are no longer surprising. As John McCartney (the American scientist who first used the term "artificial intelligence") remarked: "As soon as artificial intelligence begins to function, people stop considering it artificial intelligence."