The Perfect Society
We’re driven by the idea that as humans we must perfect a society worth living in. In doing so, we have made tremendous science and technological advancements that has allowed us to progress and evolve as a species. We have seen how technology can change our entire way of life. This truly suggests the way in which our society is headed. As we are a society that is striving for the betterment of our civilization, we are motivated by the hopes of a utopian world. Utopia offers a goal to reach and a vision to be realized. But can this be accomplished? While it should be noted that history has never seen a utopian state, the real question is whether a utopian state is sustainable. Through these technological developments emerges the Artificial Intelligence, which offers us a glimpse of Utopia.
Are Great Ideas Always Great?
In our pursuit to achieve the true perfect society we have many controlling powers making the decisions to push our world into a more advanced and perfected world. These ideas may show promise for the future, but in reality these Utopia ideals potentially hide dystopian outcomes. A dystopia is defined as, “a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.” Through literature we see dystopias as a futuristic, imagined universe in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through corporate, bureaucratic, technological, or totalitarian control. Through literature, dystopias show exaggerated worse-case scenarios that draw attention to real-world issues regarding society, environment, politics, economics, religion, psychology, ethics, science, and/or technology. Throughout dystopian literature we see many different types of dystopian control. We see Corporate Control which focuses on one or more large corporations controlling society through products, advertising, and/or the media. Another example of a dystopian control is Bureaucratic Control which focuses on society being controlled by a bureaucracy, relentless regulations, and incompetent government officials. There is sometimes a Philosophical / Religious control in dystopian literature where society is controlled by a philosophical or religious ideology often enforced through a dictatorship or theocratic government. One final type of dystopian control is technological control where society is being controlled through computers, robots, and/or scientific means. Contrary to the technologically utopian claims, which view technology as a beneficial addition to humanity, technological dystopias mainly focus on the negative effects cause by the advancements of technology.
Artificial Intelligence: The Science of our Future
With recent 2015 productions like Ex-Machina, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Terminator Genesis, Artificial Intelligence has become a topic of interest that more and more people are beginning to notice. After Google purchased a previously unknown software named DeepMind, it began showing signs of the machines knowledge; there have been many big-named people like Dr. Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates who have become skeptics of the new found discoveries of Artificial Intelligence. But what exactly is Artificial Intelligence? A.I. is defined as the intelligence exhibited by machine or software. It is also the name of the academic field of study which studies how to create computers and computer software that are capable of intelligent behavior. The field of Artificial Intelligence was founded at a conference on the campus of Dartmouth College in the summer of 1956. Some attendees included John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, Arthur Samuel, and Herbert Simon. They became the leaders of A.I. research for many decades. They and their students wrote programs that were astonishing to most people. Computers were winning at checkers, solving Algebraic word problems, proving logical theorems, and even speaking English. The study of Artificial Intelligence is interdisciplinary, in which a number of sciences and professions converge, including Computer Science, Mathematics, Psychology, Linguistics, Philosophy, Neuroscience, as well as other specialized fields such as artificial psychology. The main reason Artificial Intelligence research has not exponentially increased since those years is because the research hit a plateau and there were lack of funds supporting the research.
The Idea of Artificial Intelligence truly displays Utopian ideals, in which Artificial Intelligence can push our world into a more proficient world, as well as A.I. can help us learn and explore more about our world, more than we as humans could ever learn. Artificial Intelligence gives us greater precision and accuracy when completing tasks. Artificial Intelligence receives a coded task, and the system will carry out the most proficient way of completing this task. Artificial Intelligence can also explore and learn more when sent below the depths of the ocean, or even outside of our air space. Artificial intelligent systems can explore more parts of our world than humans could ever dream about, imagine the amount of information we could obtain. Artificial Intelligence can also increase efficiency by performing tasks for more hours than humans, and because machines do not require sleep, or breaks, they can continue functioning without ever stopping; and the best part about that is that companies would not have to pay these machines. A controversial idea of Artificial Intelligence is the idea of lacking emotions from the machines. This can be either seen as a positive or a negative. With the lack of emotions, robots can think logically and then take action and make the right decisions. But with lack of emotions you have an ethical concern. Machines will not be able to understand human ethics and what matters to us as humans. Concepts such as care, understanding, and togetherness cannot be understood by machines, and they essentially lack the human touch. Along with the idea of ethics, there are many other dystopian outcomes from Artificial Intelligence. The risk of exploitation of Artificial Intelligence from criminal groups could also pose a danger to our society and our world. Artificial Intelligence only does tasks that are coded into its algorithm. What if a terrorist organization codes to assassinate the President of The United States? The Artificial Intelligence will learn, then process this, and then learn the most efficient way of completing this task; and then will go about completing the task. This is a scary thought, but as the advancements of A.I. increase, we possibly could see a world where A.I. is used as a weapon. We have also seen as our society has grown with technology that the skills of humans diminish as we gain technology that helps us with everyday tasks. With the acquisition of Artificial Intelligence, humans might become fully dependent on those machines, and thus will allow machines to supersede humans. If machines are able to surpass humans, we run the risk of machines becoming the master of humans.
