Why do we fear the Artificial Intelligence ?

Well, this is a very good question indeed... why do so many people fear the future ? I mean okay, the terminator it`s a point of view but still, this is not the case. I highly doubt that some day, the computers/AI/ Artificial Intelligence will make a riot and kill everybody around here. And even if they would do that they would probably have a very good cause to do that. Why ? Well take a big look around us, humans destroy almost every place they go to...

Okay, enough with the sarcasm, the point actually is that, even if we like it or not, the artificial intelligence is evolving, from the old simple yet reliable percetrons to the breath taking neuronal networks today and constant self-changing algorithms, for exemple take this article about the IBM`s Watson super computer ... 

Then, as opposed to finding the single correct answer to a question, the contestant needs to figure out every possible question that could have the answer, then decide which is most likely to be the one the quiz setters were thinking of. That requires a combination of reasoning, judgment, and considering several ideas near-simultaneously, a set of skills to which humans are better suited.

That’s the theory at least, but IBM believes its machine Watson (as in Thomas, the IBM founder) could compete with the best. As a result, the computer is taking on Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, two of the all time greats at playing the show.

The rules of the challenge say that Watson can only work from data stored on the machine: it’s not allowed to network with other computers or access the Internet. That said, Watson does take up the equivalent space of 10 refrigerators: for practical reasons it’s represented at the podium by a flat-screen monitor. It’s been set up to analyze possible answers and rank their likelihood, only buzzing in if it has an answer with a set level of certainty.

In preparation for the contest, Watson has played more than 50 games against former champions, but this week’s test is the first time a result has been made public. The final score saw Jennings on $3,400, Rutter on $1,200 and Watson taking glory with $4,400.

Although there’s a million dollar prize at stake in the challenge, IBM will donate any winning to charity. It says the aim of developing Watson isn’t TV glory, but rather to have a practical way of coming up with a technology that reverses the usual question-answer format. For example, it could lead to computer systems that do a better job of diagnosing a medical condition from a list of symptoms, or performing a similar role in tech support. It’s also possible it could lead to search engines that are more able to understand natural language questions.

via geeksaresexy.net

Well, makes you wonder... and yes it gives you a chill down the spine, but this is the future, and you have to get used to this type of things, because they are going to very frequent in the years that will come. But before you start to imagine droids and robots lurking around the city and killing every single human like in the "terminator" or like in this comic, this type of technology has a lot to offer... 

via smbc-comics.com

This is a long shot, but it is quite close to the nuclear technology, apart of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear bombs, and the Russian submarines, nuclear technology is a very good source of energy. So in the end it you think about it a bit, it's not the technology that can bring harm, it is the human that operates it ... 

So what gives you the "creeps" about the AI and robots ?