Notes. Task 7. Answer the questions

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INTELLIGENT MACHINES¹

From the history of computers

The evolution of artificial intelligence2 is now proceeding so rapidly that by the end of the century cheap computers no larger than portable typewriters will exist that will be able to solve almost any problem faster and more efficiently than we can.

"Intelligence" in a machine, as in a human, is best defined as the ability to solve complex problems swiftly. This may involve medical diagnosis and prescriptions, resolving legal matters or playing war-games:in other words advising governments whether or not to go to war.

While computers have already enhanced the deadliness of weapons, the prospect for the future is that they will play the more beneficial role of preventing wars. If asked to assess the chances of victory, the computer will

analyse facts quite differently from the life-longmilitary expert with hismartial enthusiasmand ambitions.

When the same statistics are fed into the emotionless machine each to be weighed with cold objectivity and then assessed against each other, the answer, far more often than in human decision-making,will be "if you start this war you will lose".

The computer cooly appraises the chances of success before the conflict begins, may well advise that the fight is unwinnable — or that the chances of victory are unacceptably low — and needless disastercan be avoided.

At what point today we decide that their mental capacity is approaching the human level? This question will be answered by an ingenious trickknown as the Turing Test.

We most easily assess people's intelligence by communicating with them. The late British mathematician, Alan Turing, proposed a simple test. A person would sit alone in a room talking by teleprinter5with two other beings elsewhere, one of them human and the other a computer. When after substantial conversation he no longer knew which was which, the computer would have passed the Turing Test, and arguably would have attained human intelligence.

No machine today comes near to passing the Turing Test. These are early days, however, and we may suspect that the rise of machine's IQ4 will be swift.

What will happen when this moment arrives? The most likely outcome is a world-wide slave empire, in which we are the masters and the computers virtually run the planet for us. But what if there arises a "Spartacus computer", a series of rebel machines with the ambitionto reversetheseroles?

Prof. Isaac Asimov may have solved the problem with a masterpiece of mathematical logic. He proposes that all intelligent machines should have the following three "Laws" programmed into them as instincts:

1.A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.

2.A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except when such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3.A robot must protect its own existence so long as such protection

does not conflict with the First and Second Laws.

It sounds foolproof5, but will it work? Pessimists will still pay attention to the ominous words of Arthur C. Clarke: "The first invention of a su-per-intelligentmachine will be the last invention mankind will be allowed to make".

Notes

1 intelligentmachines-думающиемашины

2 artificial intelligence – искусственный интеллект

3 teleprinter - телетайп

4 IQ (Intelligence Quotient) - a series of tests to assess somebody's intellect-

коэффициент умственных способностей

5 foolproof – застрахованный от случайных ошибок

Task 7. Answer the questions

1.How can the "intelligenceof a computer be defined best?

2.What are the possible uses of a computer?

3.What does the Turing Test consist in?

4.Are you enthusiastic or sceptical about the planet, ''run by the computers"?

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