Saturday, July 24, 2010

Should we make machine Intelligent?

Well some days ago I heard from someone that teaching process is changing so rapidly that there will not be any pen and paper in use. I remember my primary school days, when my teacher used to say all these stuff about the (future) technology. I used to feel so thrilled about it at that age thinking 'Yes.. it would be the great day!'

Now when I am an M.Tech student with specialization 'Machine Intelligence' , where we are taught to make machine intelligent so that one day a human can be replaced by a machine at many places. Well let me define what we mean by 'Machine Intelligence' for those who are new to this term, cause my mother asks me this question twice in a month. I will try to make it clear using an example. If you put one apple and one orange in front of your computer, turn on the camera for it and ask it to identify which is an orange? It will see the objects through a camera but probably you will get no answer, because your machine can not make decisions i.e. it is not intelligent enough to "infer". If you perform the same exercise with your 4yr old niece, she would spontaneously come up with the correct answer. Well, here one branch of machine intelligence 'Pattern Recognition' plays a role. Here we make these things easy for a machine. We can provide it some shapes and colour data to make decisions. Still there isn't any technology that can let your machine smell the object and perhaps taste the object!

In 'Machine Intelligence' we are directly in race with the Nature. Though we have started just 50-60 years back in this race, we have reached quite far but still a long way to go. At many places we have replaced the human effort. Like, where you had to keep a door man to open the gate only when, yours or your relatives', cars come, There are automatic Door opener with the system installed with desired Car number plates data that "if any car with provided numbers comes then only open the door" kind of instructions.

I see a danger in doing so. Population of many countries is increasing with a rapid rate. Then how will be the scene after 50 years when we would have enough machines to do all the work. What shall people do if there is a machine to do that. And always human labour is costlier than machine so I am sure what would industries prefer.

Other concern I see is, some conventional methods, i think, are still needed. Like, I find teaching on the board more effective than that through slides... Rough work/drafting with pencil and paper... Chapati made by your mom.. printed photos than digital on screen photos and blah blah..

So sometimes I get confused, should we stop this race or continue with increasing speed. Though as a student I will continue doing my assignments  still this topic is rolling in my mind quite often.