Rodney Brooks: I am a robot and so are you!

MIT Professor and celebrated robotics researcher and pioneer Rodney Brooks recently wrote an article for IEEE's Spectrum magazine presenting his view on the Singularity. The Singularity is the idea that there is a well defined and fast approaching moment in time when artificial intelligence will match and eventually start to surpass human intelligence.

Brooks starts the article by expressing his view that humans are essentially robots made of organic matter and as such it is very much conceivable that machines that are as capable and intelligent can be constructed from non-organic matter; in other words, there is nothing special about humans.

Brooks gives his view of how the Singularity will come about not as an event that will occur at a single point in time but rather as a gradual process over a long period of time. Brooks explains,

I don't think there is going to be one single sudden technological “big bang” that springs an Artificial General Intelligence into “life.” Starting with the mildly intelligent systems we have today, machines will become gradually more intelligent, generation by generation. The singularity will be a period, not an event.

He talks about how this transitional period from human to artificial intelligence will come about as researchers start to build AI systems with the intelligence of small kids (for example, the object recognition abilities of a 2-year old child and the language understanding skills of a 4-year old child) and progressing forward until a computer with the intelligence of an adult human being becomes a reality. He also emphasizes his conviction that true AI can only come about when algorithms are coupled with a body capable of experiencing the physical world. I have no argument against that except maybe my belief that we might be able to build machines that sense the world in ways that humans cannot; this could lead machines to acquire a better understanding of how the universe works something that we, humans, can only do indirectly (if at all) by constructing and utilizing special instruments such as microscopes and telescopes.

These are only a couple of the main points that Brooks addresses in this well thought-out article; another issue that his spent considerable time discussing is whether the human brain can be simulated by a digital computer or if a different kind of computational engine is needed in order to achieve human-level intelligence. This is definitely an open question and an argument that I often make to derail those who believe passionately that faster computers inevitable will lead to machines with human-level intelligence.

The entire article is available online and I highly recommend anyone with an interest in robotics give it a read.

The full article: I, Rodney Brooks, Am a Robot.