The Artificial Intelligence Disadvantage

The Artificial Intelligence Disadvantage
Overcome by the Watson Supercomputer
In February 2011, IBM overcame the disadvantages listed below, demonstrating the Watson Supercomputer, which recognizes patterns in text data to surpass the capabilities of the human mind.

The Artificial Intelligence Disadvantage
A Lack of Effective Tools
The handicap for Artificial Intelligence is that it lacks the pattern recognition tools needed to succeed. The study of Artificial Intelligence began formally in Dartmouth College in 1956 as an effort by a group of scientists to evaluate and mechanically replicate human intelligence on the assumption that "every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it." Their objective was to write computer programs, which could finally create human level intelligence in computers and robots. Those early scientists failed to realize that the mind uses pattern recognition and not computation. They also woefully underestimated the memory storage capacity required to achieve such an ambitious objective.

In trying to match human intelligence, artificial intelligence attempts to replicate nature's coded behaviors accumulated over millions of years.
In a human body, the DNA codes alone occupy cubic miles of pages.
Apart from genetic codes, nature has assembled similar volumes of code in myriad subsystems.
At the top of this hierarchy of knowledge, the human cortex carries memories of an evolutionary history and a lifetime of multi-sensory experiences.
The nervous system accesses all this knowledge with contextual brilliance within the blink of an eye.
Despite all its successes, the first undeniable AI disadvantage is that it presently lacks the means to store a comparable size of memory. Second, it lacks a clear strategy for instantly accessing this galactic memory store.

The Artificial Intelligence Disadvantage
Millions of Years Of Memories
Nature has transmitted the programmed memories needed to sustain life on an unimaginable scale. The evolutionary process logically assembled these in cell memories, testing myriad variations. The DNA memories of every living thing on the planet had digital, error-correcting, and self-replicating codes. Those vast blueprints improved with each generation, across millions of years.

Organisms, whose inherited traits were less suited for competition and reproduction, were eliminated and those with advantageous traits were reproduced. It was an enduring process, which had finally yielded astronauts and neurosurgeons. That assembled code of knowledge described the structures of humans and oak trees, hummingbirds and whales.

The Artificial Intelligence Disadvantage
Competition With Cubic Miles of Code
At the moment of conception, a single fertilized human egg contains information equivalent to about six billion chemical letters, which can be recorded in a thousand 500 page books. In a grown human body, with the DNA in each cell containing a sequence of over 3 billion chemical nucleotide bases, the total of those codes in the body would fill the Grand Canyon fifty times over with 500 page manuals. This was just the code in the nucleus of cells. Back in 1956, scientists attempted to imitate life, using computers with 1.5K memories.

The Artificial Intelligence Disadvantage
Many Parallel Coded Systems
Human intelligence is supported by massive coded memories in myriad fields. During the eons that it took to assemble the DNA codes, nature also assembled ascending levels of knowledge in the immune system, the spinal cord, the reticular system, the limbic system and finally, the prefrontal regions. Millions of potentially pathogenic organisms and substances had to be neutralized. Cubic miles of recognition code enabled the immune system to act decisively within the organs, tissues, cells, and cell products of the body by differentiating between myriad self and nonself entities.

Knowledge in the spinal cord coordinated muscle movements millisecond by millisecond to power the rippling movements of a centipede, the graceful steps of a dancer, or the soaring flight of a bird. Memories for myriad smells enabled the reptilian systems to distinguish between prey and predator. Knowledge in the limbic system responded suitably to a wide range of events, which triggered anger and fear, or jealousy and despair. The computation capabilities of the computer cannot manage the pattern sensing responses of living things, based on knowledge assembled over millions of years of history and a lifetime of experience, play and imagination.

The Artificial Intelligence Disadvantage
The Human Cortex Scales Up More
Human intelligence added myriad new levels to animal intelligence. The great achievements in science and art are based on stored knowledge of millions of relationships between numerous fields. Every stroke of the brush on a canvass by a master is backed by a knowledge of the effects of line, color, perspective, texture and myriad details of the facial representation of complex emotions. A work of art is only possible through immense inherited skills and those acquired over years of practice and training. This lode of innate knowledge adds cubic miles more of codes in the nervous system. Artificial intelligence has barely touched on these complex pattern sensing tasks.

The Artificial Intelligence Disadvantage
Incredible Speed In Execution
Artificial intelligence fails in the speed of knowledge retrieval. An animal mind stores billions of pages of code. This data is evaluated and acted on within milliseconds. Subconscious processes of your immune system utilize internal code recognition systems to attack a detected invader. The olfactory system, using an inbuilt knowledge of smells, enables an animal to instantly recognize a scent and sense danger. An escape plan is hatched within the instant in which a wild animal perceives a situation to be dangerous.

The action cannot be stupid. The animal should not head into the predator. In the tangled undergrowth of the wild, increasing distance from danger demanded uncommon creativity. Memories of a lifetime had to be recalled. A safe objective had to be chosen instantly. There are myriad options in often treacherous terrain, with impassable obstructions and life threatening dangers. That objective of getting away is even achieved by slipping into a safe sanctuary, inaccessible to the predator. Like the underside of a rock. Artificial intelligence cannot compete in the field of real time information retrieval achieved by animals.

The Artificial Intelligence Disadvantage
Barely The First Faltering Steps
Over half a century, AI has traveled far. In chess, as in simple computation, a computer can beat a human. Expert Systems assist the industry with a wide range of diagnostic software. Robotic vehicles have independently traversed long distances. Optical character recognition and speech recognition have advanced enough to have many practical applications.

But, massive storage and simultaneous real time retrieval of multi-sensory data is still not within reach. Natural language processing suffers from that problem. It requires an understanding of language, culture, history and emotions to be able to translate a sentence. Imagine the vast knowledge of the environment needed for a robot to understand a simple context like “outside.” Common sense requires cubic miles of knowledge. Which computer can store a lifetime of video memories and recall a single frame within milliseconds? To succeed, artificial intelligence requires myriad pattern sensing algorithms and the ability to extract contextual knowledge in real time from cubic miles of coded memories.

The Artificial Intelligence Disadvantage
Overcome by the Watson Supercomputer
In February 2011, IBM overcame the disadvantages listed above, demonstrating the Watson Supercomputer, which recognizes patterns in text data to surpass the capabilities of the human mind.

This page was last updated on 30-Dec-2013.

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Once, Decades Ago, I Tripped Over The Divine

For me, the flash of insight into the sublime happened way back in 1989. The vision stunned me with the grandeur of its simplicity. The startling prospect emerged from, of all things, an algorithm! Its potential flickered into my view by accident, while transferring a Prolog AI disease recognition procedure to a Lotus spreadsheet.  I had inadvertently reversed the logic of the Expert System, instructing it to eliminate improbabilities, instead of selecting probabilities. Such algorithms are just repetitive procedures. Cold and logical lines of code. But, they yield dependable results. Algorithms are just mechanical tools. But, this algorithmic code was unique.

The capability of the algorithm was that it could sift a Google sized database of connected facts to instantly recognize patterns. This was 10 years before Google started building its vast data warehouses. But, I knew the mind identified complex patterns when you just opened your eyes!  For the next few months, glimpses of probable neural accomplishments through instant pattern recognition kept waking me up at 3 a.m. I kept adding to the list on paper. The dots just kept connecting. Decades later, more possible links keep opening up new horizons - say, the seat of consciousness or the persistence of working memory. This algorithm could distinguish between good and evil. It could make us weep in anguish or gasp in wonder.  Could it be the fabled divine gift to life?

It worked in the mind. Gray's Anatomy was an exhaustive source and a starting point for me. Its 1500 pages listed the functions of virtually every mental organ. The algorithm could link them all into a single mind that could suture an artery, while recalling a tennis match. Starting at the input level, it focused your senses. The light from the heavens. The songs of the birds. The touch of a loved one. The fragrance of a rose. The taste of chocolate. We were blessed with millions of receptors, which flashed this magnificent perception of the world to the sensory regions of our cortex. There were association regions there, which could use the algorithm on this data to identify a pencil, or a word. We could separate the idea of a gun from the idea of a war in the abundance of incoming sensory patterns.

Object and event recognition. Algorithmic pattern recognition could act at every stage of mental processing. Things were happening all around us. There was a limbic system, where the algorithm could identify between good and bad happenings. It generated emotions. This mammalian region could drive us to attack in anger, or flee in terror. It was the limbic system, which held us in thrall. It filled us with despair, or tortured us in grief. It made us question the very meaning of life. Life was so unfair. Why did we have to suffer so?

Sadly, we lacked the capacity to naturally see our emotions and feelings. The limbic system was invisible to us. It was the algorithm, which caused the motor system to transform those emotions and feelings into actions. Hunger made us raid the frig. We went to work every day to avoid the pain of guilt. Love reminded us to pick up children from school. Hatred built the death camps. In the end, urges from the limbic system drove us out of Eden.

As a precious compensation, algorithmic pattern recognition ascended to higher levels. Our prefrontal regions gifted us with science and logic. Those skills enabled us to understand the vast structures of the cosmos. We built leviathans, which could sail the oceans and fly the skies. We explored the heavens. Our powerful civilizations conquered the continents and explored the cosmos. Even more, the algorithm also pointed us to the divine, which defied logic and definition. We sensed the order and beauty, which, like the laws of nature, existed from the beginning of time.

Pattern recognition dealt with subtleties. Reason and logic could not create great symphonies, or works of art. Why do we stand in awe of the sunset? Or find joy in a lilting song, or in the laugh of a baby?  Nerve cells recognized such patterns without our awareness and fired to initiate the skin tingling thrill. Who, but the Designer, could possibly want to hard wire us to thrill to the astonishing splendor of the design?

Over three decades have passed since my first glimpse of the truth. Like an ancient city hidden by forest cover, the vast and invisible city of the mind has many avenues linking its great palaces and temples. I also realized that those divine pattern recognition paths led to still spaces, untrammelled by the ravages of emotions and feelings.... Life was worth living! Even the great sages of the past advised us to still passions to empower the sublime within us. The divine stillness lives at the core. You too can find your home there.

The information provided in this website is useful for the modification of normal behavioral patterns. Please do get professional help, before applying the advice for the treatment of any abnormal behaviors. Copyright ©2008 by Ebbi Thomas. All rights reserved. This material may be freely published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.